Diary of a Serial Schizo

KenyaFeb28: A Mockery of Egypt & Tunisia?

2012-02-21T17:52:00.000-08:00

Now I usually agree with Miss Bree unequivocally on everything, but as she aptly preempted in her post I am the Devil’s Advocate, and possibly expected in light of my previous posts on the issue, today is not one of those days. The hilarious bash at our pseudo-intellectual attempts at being 21^st century Shakespeares was a nice touch though; remided me of a post I read recently about guys coming up with “really bad Romeo and Juliet pastiche” on Midegablog.

Let me start by stating that I do not know, nor am I affiliated to anyone that started the 'fad' – her words – that is #KenyaFeb28 any more than the next guy. I do not know what their intentions were, whether political or simply populist. What I do know is that had they not started it, I would not have been put into the same jar as many of the people in whose forums I have since been thrust. I would possibly not have had the gumption to go ahead and present my own opinions for my fellow tweenyans and the the tworld at large to see. That would have made yesterday Black Monday for me, akin to that commercialized Monday a fortnight ago.

I am pro#KenyaFeb28. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it is the Mona Lisa. I consider it more of a Mona Marangi. As I read Miss Bree's lead, and considering what day it was, I found myself thinking "Here we go. This will be like seating at the Cinema with a film production student." And I thought I was right, as she started with the usual 'poor lighting here, poor frame there'. But then she advanced to the Movie director, 'poor frame, let's do take 2'... A bit ambiguous on what take 2 should be, but nonetheless effective for it got me thinking.

Mona Marangi

Her argument rightly states that the motives for this 'fad' may well not be noble; the organizers clearly had no vision for it. Or didn't they? For that argument you have probably seen my recent blogpost on the same.

My two pence of contention however rests on this statement: “If Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco are doing something, let’s do something too…” That it is a mockery of their efforts. As an individual with a keen passion for History, I would have you know that Africa has been more or less nationalistic – regionalistic? – within the same time-frame, and the same goes for a good majority of the rest of the world. Think Independence and the enlightenment resulting from World War II. Think the Prise de la Bastille as the trigger that pulled an American Independence story in the 18th century. Think the Industrial Revolution and the similar factors that led to most of the 18th & 19th Century industrial powers' advancements.

You could even think how Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea Bissau and Togo all came together to form ECOWAS in 1975. Cape Verde joined the following year (we came up with a mnemonic back in 2000 to deal with the pressure of remembrance put on us by the awesomely infamous 8-4-4 system; that’s how come I remember them.) Since then we’ve had the likes of PTA ‘81, now COMESA since ‘94; IGAD ‘86, which came up as a response to economic hardships in the region between ‘74 and ‘84; and now EAC and the West African Monetary zone both talking about common currencies by 20 whatnot.

Don’t even get me started on how many African states gained their independence in 1960. And finally, I am sure you know that while independence was extremely bloody – MAUMAU, Apartheid et cetera – some of the nationalists (Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere) advocated for, and in some cases succeeded in carrying out, peaceful diplomatic ventures as opposed to Guerrilla Warfare. How effective the diplomacy would have been without the backdrop that was warfare spread all over the protectorates, however, is a matter of conjecture.

So yes, we react to cause, and come up with effect; and in so doing we affect others, and become their cause for similar effect. Their implementation of said effect is not sacrosanctly bound to be similar to our own. So no, this is not a slap in the face of the Arab world; we've had our Guerrilla Warfare, and by God I know we agree that we do not want an encore. This is the time for diplomacy, and that only begins with unity. #KenyaFeb28 was probably a mere display, in which case you would be right: it’d be a mockery of North Africa’s revolution.

But the forums started as a result of #KenyaFeb28 can be used to fortify unity. They can be used to mobilize privileged Kenyans in an enlightenment project for the underprivileged, read the "Have-blogs & microblog's and the Have-not-blogs & microblog's". For revolutions are indeed populist, not elitist.

"The only time you and your friends will be able to see your dream come true is when you make them buy into it; when they see your dream of a country without tribalism, corruption and selfishness," a wise woman once said. This paradigm shift is what we can start trending as the next 'fad', transforming it into a similar mass demonstration. A demonstration of #KenyaFeb28 with collective ideas from the dialogues it has generated. So let's hope yesterday's display was a curtain raiser.

It may seem rather harried a response, but the truth is that to go somewhere we need a starting point. When did the Plasma TV first get to Kenya? Was it not in this century? Yet in principle the plasma television was first described in 1936, and invented in 1964...yes, for as long as Kenya has been a republic there has been plasma TV. My point being that there are challenges to everything, but there must be a beginning for anything to work.

'Then what?' Then we, you and me, misterNV and diasporadical, 3cb and plus254, mashada and thinker's room among the many other avenues, keep the dialogue burning for the hard substance that will transform this country.

Demographics are in our favour, what with 84% of the population still 40 and below. Yes. We Can. We do not need someone, or some elite class, to tell us what next. We can come together and tell them 'This Is It'.

Question is, ~~shall~~ will we?

KenyaFeb28: THE BEGINNING? by Brian O. Koyoo and Yule

2012-02-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

From Brian O. Koyoo, aka purveyor of the other crazy blog

We are a product of our history. As Kenyans though, we are plagued by bouts of selective amnesia that make it impossible to trace historical roots. The vast majority of Kenyans are afflicted by the ability to settle for mediocrity. The middle class is content to sit back and try not to rock the boat while the rich make the rules and the poor suffer under their brutality. We live average lives, in average neighbourhoods and drive average cars so we can sit at the end of the day and comment about what is happening around us without thought of doing something about it.

State of the Kenyan Political status quo (1963 - Now)

Think about it. On one end of all those demonstrations are chauffeur driven gits in sound proof cars. On the other are guys who will have to trek to either Kibera or Mathare. In the middle? Tear gas, police batons and rubber bullets. This sense of amnesia is what gives us the same class of ‘representatives’ after every election cycle. We are a reactive rather than proactive country, hence we lack a national ideology.

Such is the case that after people our age started fighting for democracy in North Africa, whispers about the same thing started in Kenya. One such initiative is KenyaFeb28. For those of you who have been living under a rock, the plan is that on Monday the 28th of February, from all corners of the country, Kenya is going to explode into patriotic TPF at 1pm with a rendition of the national anthem. While I applaud the organizers for this noble and novel idea, I have some issues with the purpose and effectiveness. Why? I’ll explain. But first, some facts.

The Facebook generation generally falls within the late teen to early thirties age group. This means that even our parents barely remember the independence struggle. After a whole generation of Moi running the affairs of the country, we have settled into a rut with the mindset that things could be worse. As long as blood is not being shed on the streets (till the next elections at least) then we are content with the status quo.

Wanjiku is shackled by her own mindset's poverty

History for this generation is a confusing set of ideas imparted during coma-inducing lessons in school. It is reduced to nothing more than vague words on yellowing pages forced on us by teachers. To this day, I must admit my ignorance at not knowing anything else about Pio Gama Pinto other than he was assassinated and shares a name with my dad. Pity is I can recite obscure facts about American presidents that add no value to my Kenyan heritage. This generation is left to sift through the husks of fact and fiction from historians. As presented by outsiders, the African is a fallible individual full of shortcomings while their indigenous counterparts paint fanatical images with memory gaps of our ‘freedom fighters’.

Cynicism is already a mainstay of this group of people. We were around to see the liberation brought on by KANU’s downfall in 2002 and last year’s passage of the new constitution. But just as quickly we saw this optimism shattered by partisan issues. Every national thought has since then become a matter of what language your parents speak. But we are better. Aren’t we? Only on the surface. The fact that we speak in clipped accents with the benefit of education to back our arguments doesn’t mean we don’t harbor those ethnic thoughts. I see it in my writing every once in a while. A slip here. An expression there.

If I seem to digress then let me get back to KenyaFeb 28th. Being Kenyan, I guess my first instinct is to criticize but I will resist that urge and critique. This is the moment in the movie when the underdog takes out the bad guy with inspirational music playing in the background. Think Sly Stallone’s Rocky with ‘Eye of the Tiger’ being belted out. But who is the bad guy in this tale? Unless we figure out that it is us then the February 28th might as well be about us entertaining birds. A common location is the first step. Picture thousands of Kenyan youth standing together at Uhuru Park singing despite their differences. All in all, I stand in unity with you brothers and sisters. Hopefully you won’t look outside, see me singing and walk on into your average lives. Only then can we figure out what step is next.

✈✈✈✈✈✈✈

The Way Forward? ✈ by Yule Mbois Mndialala

People have sat, scratched, and asked 'what next?'. Apparently this is some sorta deriding criticism to KenyaFeb28. The answer 'It's up to you' does not seem to hold water in many a view. The fact that this initiative has been a massive effort, and dare I say time-consuming to its organizers - people with day jobs and lives transcendental to KenyaFeb28, I would presume - has been lost in our ever so beguiling knack to want all the answers given to us on a silver platter; one hefty detriment of the reading-to-pass curriculum we grind through 16 years of; or at least some %age of it anyway, ranging anywhere from 0 to 100. Anything beyond 8-4-4, and you can arguably exclude yourself from the bracket of Kenyans who want all the answers provided, to that of Kenyans who think they have all the answers.

Seeing as I consider myself in the limbo zone between the two, I kinda understand the clamour for a 'Vision and Mission statement', complete with interchangeable definitions for goals and objectives copy-pasted from Built to Last by Collins & Porras, supplemented with strategy and value plagiarized Campo style off Strategy Maps by Kaplan & Norton, and finally fortified with the immortal words of Donald J. Trump & Robert Kiyosaki in Why We Want You To Be Rich. What I do not understand, however, is whether the organizers tell Kenyans that it's up to them because they frankly believe that telling Kenyans where to go will not help (how many of you have read the Kenya Vision 2030? Who's to say you'd read the KenyaVisionFeb28 either?) or they simply haven't had the time to come up with a vision (they have bills to pay, lives to live and places to be).

I am always of the opinion that communication works best if it is exchanged. And since there will be forums organized to coincide with the timeframe for KenyaFeb28, (such as the Kenyan Actors for Change forum at the Kenya National Theatre, 12.30pm to around 1.30pm) I choose to attend these and be a part of 'what next?' I choose not to expect others to take initiative for me, chart out a course and send me the map on social media and the blogosphere, let alone hear it on the News. I choose not to cloud my judgment, but to instead open up to the possibility that perhaps a revolution by intellectual Kenyans can be ignited by calm waters and not a sparky flame.

I choose to believe that if Zuckerberg's sneeze was enough to start a revolution, the Kenyan Youth can indeed start a blazing fire of thought and initiative, with collectedly calm endeavours to lead their future of Kenya by leading their present. So to all the sceptics, I pass the baton over to you. Will you cower in the retrogressive back seats and question a progressive if beleaguered idea, one with such potential for more, or as tweeted last night by yours truly, will you heed the call?

But just to satisfy some, how about you go with a 48-yr old's words? After all, the older are said to be wiser, and this 48-yr old is actually older than that, having inherited at birth true wisdom, not only genetically coded but fully developed. Springing from Pokomo Country, weighing a bilingual three verses and trained by Messieurs Graham Hyslop, W. Senoga-Zake, Thomas Kalume, Peter Kibukosya and Washington Omondi...I give you:

Your very own National Anthem

Notable Quotes from within it:

(Natukae na undugu)

May we dwell in unity

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Amani na uhuru)

Peace and liberty

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Raha tupate na ustawi)

Plenty be found within our borders

Clearly Unity is implied for there to be plenty within Kenya. Plenty of food. Plenty schooling. Plenty of housing. Plenty economy. Plenty of jobs. Plenty common sense. And we can start the process today.

Other notable quotes:

“I don’t come to bow, I come to conquer.”

-Bob Marley

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.”

-Bob Marley

“Welcome aboard flight KF28. Fasten your seat-belts as we fly you to Unity City✈✈✈This is a 1 way ticket, no fl8back. #KenyaFeb28” If only it were this easy...

-by @French_Freddy on Twitter last night

Click here for the previous #KenyaFeb28 post

Kenya 28 Feb - There Certainly is a Point

2012-02-21T11:05:00.000-08:00

This post is in response to N.V in the post Is KenyaFeb28 Missing the Point?

I agree with misterN.V's post - for the most part. To recap what he says, goodwill and whining will not get us anywhere. We sit around and complain, but there is little action from amongst ourselves to take the initiative and change the country ourselves. As leaders, and not as followers. Valid points, all of them. But to relegate KenyaFeb28 - a day when Kenyan citizens, and specifically the netizens, have come together in a show of unity - by saying that "unity will not be enough" is a bit reckless, and in my humble opinion, a simplistic conclusion that misses the point of KenyaFeb28.

To quote @Nittzsah on Diasporadical.com:

"KenyaFeb28 is not about asking tweeple to display their chest-thumping, smarter-than-the-next-guy-swag, as is displayed on their witty tweets and great blogs. All you're being asked is to unite with Kenyans of all backgrounds, sing your anthem and remind your leaders that as one people, we are the force to reckon with, not them"

Yes, it would make little sense to sing the National Anthem and walk on, moving to God-knows-where whence the anthem reaches its endpoint. It certainly would be an anticlimax. However when I consider N.V's last words, we need "...[m]en and women that are committed and willing to inspire others through their actions to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country", it does feel like the ideal dénouement suggested would be for some bloke to give his all, à la the self-immolation that began the Jasmine Revolution. The sanctity of human life must be maintained, in my opinion; let us not do anything rush in the name of change.

That said, I could be wrong; perhaps he does not intend something as drastic. However, I believe that at times even without a plan as to 'what next' - which is the core issue of his piece - we find ourselves, through such an initiative as KenyaFeb28, having set the foundation for something greater.

I am certain that when the Freedom Fighters went to Europe during World War II they had no expectation of 'what would happen next'. They went because they had to. Because they had no real choice. We are singing because 'we want to'. But don't kid yourself; other than KenyaFeb28, until next year's elections at least, we also have no choice of ousting everyone in government as we deem fit. The cogs of the new constitution have not brought us that far yet, and I dare say they don't seem like they will.

That is not to say that you should only sit and wait for next Monday, belt out "Ee Mungu nguvu" like a rockstar and fade into the night while the fans await their encore. You can still make a change here, and a difference there. Buy bread for the kiddo at the corner who'll otherwise go hungry. Participate in such events as the Kuweni Serious and the Girl Effect goodwill sessions in Kibera and Baba Dogo this weekend. You could do that on any other day, so long as the opportunity presents itself. There is, however, only one 1pm Feb 28 2011. We may be impractical in our venture, naively going to 'fight in WWII'; what we come back with, nonetheless, could be the beginning of our own 'nationalistic movement' that leads to 'Independence Day'.

It's a forum that we've started. Dec 17 and Jan 25 in Tunisia and Egypt respectively were relatively small in what they were at first glance. Only the cumulative aftermath has led to the great Jasmine and Egyptian Revolutions, and the domino effect that has followed thence. Do not, as such, belittle the effect of the initiative.

For you may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you do not try.

Let us one and all unite for a day...in fact for a mere few minutes, to display our solidarity for a simple cause. The National Anthem is after all a Symbol of our National Unity...but is it? When was the last time you sang all three stanzas of the Anthem?

Legalize Prostitution: A Modest Proposal

2012-02-10T05:29:00.000-08:00

It's a new dawn, an age of consent, and as we blindly tout the Kenya Vision 2030 as the beacon of the nation's future, it's only befitting that we liberate men's 20/20 vision; enter the much-maligned marching orders set to be issued on Koinange Street.

Yet instead of getting caught up in political euphemisms and conversational ulcers on the increasing extravagance of pure BS this regime has achieved only too effortlessly, and with an inspired regularity, we should really mellow in the vast array of opportunity this overglorified statement of the obvious presents. After all, the art of making hard men humble has long been an accepted norm in our remarkably misogynistic society.

Aspiring pilots are told to pursue Geography and have a good understanding of Trigonometry; which brings me to my first proposal. A doll. We should kick the debate up a notch and introduce preteen females to Barbie dolls with plastic torsos scaled to the proportions of a 5 foot 4, 60-kg stripper in her mid-twenties dressed in nothing but crotchless panties, her chesticles hanging precariously on bare string. The toys are to be dubbed Easy Virtue™, or maybe Solicity™; jury's still out on that one. Since turning tricks has no room for sincere feelings, the dolls would be expressly intended to cultivate from a tender age the sense of traumatic stress, social stigma, substance and sexual abuse, atrophy and secrecy that such a career option will demand of them when legislated.

Next is a course that would do the next breed of negotiable affections a whole world of good; Putting Out 101. A good degree of agreeable conversation goes into the sealing of any beddable deal, and any budding night wife will need to develop an adequate lingo, with a basic knowledge of marketing no-nos. This will require recruitment of seasoned hookers into trainers, or better yet university professors in Laynguistics, Herganomics and Analytics. They could additionally act as consultants on Consumer Watch, giving the citizens a breakdown of going rates and best deals...sorta like the Nakumatt vs Naivas version of the Red Light District.

A regular night for many a woman of transactional affections entails a frank and open exchange of blows, mostly with the woman acting as a connector to their clients' fists. Enter Smack 101, an endurance course to be very likely designed by a bitter sadistic ex-KDF service man recently back from Dadaab. Rumour has it that the quest to beat the aspiring pros into sturdy submission will be turned into a Reality TV show after a preliminary experiment on one Bob Alai achieved impressive results. The show, something along the lines of The Real Street Wives of Koinange, will be hosted by an equally irritating Whoabert Nuhgila. Of course the exercise will also include a refresher licence on how to drug, rob and exit stage left in no seconds flat.

Finally, a website will soon be up, sponsored by the Mayor of Nairobi, where clients leave their teste monials, and pimps can announce any job f@£kancies...

Wanted

Are you hot enough to melt the polar ice caps? Do you have an insatiably high libido? Then look no further...we have just the job for you.

Requirements

Preferrably achieved grade D cup (o) (o)

Open to more than one job position...

Persons with more than 2 years experience need not apply.

All this development would however lack meaning without an accompanying monument, to which end the Mayor will set aside some hard earned taxpayers' money to erect some of Jeff Koons' Neo Pop art on K-Street...


Puts a whole new meaning to men hard at work.

Picture originally at The Guardian.co.uk

Caroline Mutoko and the Two Sides of her Story \ Cosign @kachwanya \

2012-01-30T23:09:00.000-08:00

Reblog from Kachwanya.com

By kachwanya – Nairobi; January 30, 2012

Wow, Caroline Mutoko hit a raw nerve with some Social Media gurus on her piece which is still not yet online by the time of writing this. So I have to give you a link of a scanned version here. Caroline made some valid points but sometime good stories get lost in the language used.

The central point of the piece is the hate speech and how it is being spread on Social Media. After reading it twice, I realized that there could be two possible conclusions made out of that story. And that is the reason why the reactions about it was in twos..those for Caroline, basically agreeing with her and others against her points, especially the language used. Somebody who saw it the same way, following the reactions of people on twitter is @Mwirigi.

On twitter:

Mwirigi Bobby : Are there two versions of Mutoko’s post? Coz yenyewe…

One Side of the Story

If for a second people put their emotions aside, then you would realize that Kenya is at a crossroad, full of angry people. And Politics in particular bring out the worst in some Kenyans. I still don’t get it with tribalism. It is like a cancer eating Kenyans alive. As Mutoko noted, venom coming from some Kenyans online is unbelievable. Worse still, all that come because of some people who do not give a damn whether you have food on your table or not.

The more I look at it the more I see that Moi was right when he used to tell people that having a Minister from your community will not add any sufuria of ugali on your table. Well, Moi was/is a hated figure, so that might not make sense to some people; but for real, I think he had a point. In my adult life, I have never seen anything useful to talk about in Kenya from Kenyan politicians. It is the same reason why I don’t understand when people go ballistic because of a politician. If only Kenyans would be passionate about Nation Building the way they are when it comes to politicians from their communities, then we would not be talking about vision 2030 but vision 2000.

I agree with Caroline on the hate speech, although I don’t think it is only an online problem. Kenyans online are just a perfect sample of their offline versions, the only difference being that online you can trace their thoughts. The offline versions discuss the same in their mother tongues. Believe me the offline versions are the worst.

The other side of the story

Caroline is disappointed at the venom coming from Facebook but when I look at her language, I don’t see the difference. Calling people numbskulls and idiots can as well pass as hate speech on its own. Caroline should realize that her article instantly became online vs offline, and one can argue that she was inciting the Offline against the Online.

Then the wrong facts on the article. To start with people on Facebook are not Anonymous, to join Facebook one has to use his /her email address or phone number with real names. If you are looking for real people with real identity go to Facebook or Linkedin. Caroline was probably talking about the world of Blogosphere or twitter, where some people use aliases or fake names. But am not sure, probably Caroline think that Facebook is another name for Internet or Social Media. So let's just say that what people said on the Facbook Media pages can be traced directly to the people who said them.

Talking of the Media houses, I got bored with the way they framed the narratives on the run up to the ICC ruling. At one point you would have thought the violence was going to breakup immediately the ICC announced their ruling. What was the reason for posting the reporters in Eldoret, in Gatundu, in Nandi, mmmh nobody was posted around North Eastern...(or where does Ali come from?).

At this point I might not be that wrong in believing that some Kenyans took cue from the Media Houses, Caroline Mutoko being a big shot in one of them. Caroline should start by advising the Media Houses to stop treating the ICC suspects as the heroes, and start concentrating on the victims of the PEV. How many front page articles focusing on IDPs have you seen on the Nation, Standard or The Star? Compare that with numerous articles about ICC suspects and other Politicians...even from the Media House from which Caroline Mutoko is one of the decision makers?

Conclusions

For a minute let us all be sober and agree to disagree. Online is a perfect space for discussion, and presenting diverging views. It should never be me my way or highway. Calling people stupid or idiots, or any other misplaced adjective does not help anyone. But at the same time the words coming from some people’s mouths directed to other communities should be checked.

One nation, one country, one people. And that does not mean we protect the thugs from our communities…..think about it!!!

Of Kenyan Authorities and Daft Crime

2012-01-14T01:27:00.000-08:00

Show of hands...how many of us have fallen prey to crime in Kenya?


Phew! Good to know am not alone.

You need not be Kenyan -- or possess any analytical cogs in the mechanics of your evaluation of life for that matter -- to appreciate that crime is bred by preparedness and/or opportunity.

On the one hand, preparedness could be voluntary; perhaps you had the motive and acted upon it by committing a petty or much grander crime. On the other it could be involuntary; , maybe you did not realize the you had the motive till a need you had was complemented - and indeed complimented - by the opportunity to act upon it.

We lost 4bn shillings and not 8bn...Tuko Pamoja

In the first scenario, where the need was recognized way before the crime was perpetrated, and as such used to plan the crime, perhaps extreme poverty was your excuse, albeit a poor one. Perhaps your excuse was the grand political thuggery, albeit an escapist one. For in truth, nothing excuses lawbreaking, but something often explains it.

Premeditated crimes, however, are not the subject of discussion today, for those kindsa crimes warrant prison sentences I am ~~unwilling~~ not equipped to delve into.

When indigence spreads, so does villainy - especially theft and property crime.

Matthew D'Ancona

Let's talk crimes of opportunity instead. To do that, perhaps more pertinent is the definition of crime in the reality that is the Kenyan context, in which case crime is anything that will land you in jail. If cases such as the Goldenberg, Anglo-leasing, Petroleum et al. scams prove anything, it's that landing in jail is primarily at the whims of the powers that be; so do the following cases:

A Conviction of Convenience

I know this guy currently serving a 3 year prison term, for...wait for it...passing out. You heard me. He drunk too much and passed out. And for that he's now doing hard time. Well, there are some finer details to it. Say for instance how he was also guilty of abject stupidity caused by excessive consumption of cheap liquor. Cheap...but essentially legal. Add to that the fact that he chose to pass out on the streets, in an alley where Kenyan afandes were re-enacting a scene from Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit.

So the robbers ditch the gun under the passed-out drunk, and voila...case closed! No investigations, no tax-payers' money 'wasted', no nothing. Guilty as charged. Gavel strikes...and just like that, a man serves a 3-year sentence.

Malicious Renditions of Convenience

Case in point: Al-Amin Kimathi, Executive Coordinator for the Muslim Human Rights Forum, MHRF, currently under illegal incarceration in Uganda. He had gone visiting his son at the Makerere University when Kenyan citizens were illegally - notice the trend? - transported to Ugandan Police remand after the bombings in June last year. Cue the call from their families - all muslim - asking him to advocate for their release during what was to be his brief stay in Uganda. To contextualize what happens next, in September 2008, Mr Kimathi co-edited a report of what is summarized as the US-led Mass Extra-Ordinary Renditions of Over 100 People from Kenya to Somalia, Ethiopia and Guantanamo Bay between Jan 07 and Aug 07 and Subsequent Counter-Terrorism Operations in Kenya. It would be titled the Horn of Terror, a collaboration with the Open Society Initiative for East Africa.

In introducing the Recommendation and Appeals section, the report reads verbatim:

"The MHRF is of the strongest conviction that the Kenya government is primarily responsible for the violations...for the disregard of both international and national law, the disregard for the human and legal rights of the detainees and their continued illegal incarceration and all the suffering they were occasioned by the arbitrary arrests and illegal deportations..."

Mr Kimathi prior to his arrest

It's no small wonder thus, that he was on 16th September 2010 himself subjected to arbitrary
- and indeed ironic - arrest, accused of masterminding the bombings and is yet to see the right of free daylight.

*************************

Now compare the two cases. In scenario one we have an unknown man, conveniently in a dark alley next to an abandoned weapon used in a robbery.In scenario two we have a public figure, conveniently in a dark dungeon as a direct result of painstakingly fighting for the rights of his brothers. Are these not crimes of opportunity?

They are exactly that. Only the crime was perpetrated by those who are technically above the law in a vehemently corrupt system...yet the two men remain undeservedly detained in their stead.

Daft crime. But you know what's even more positively perverse? Read the papers. An inconsequential stud makes headlines. Watch TV. Swaggerific makes the 9 o'clock. Listen to Classic 105. Pure gibberish and utter bollocks served chilled by the morning hosts as you jav to town each morning.

Only when we lose everything are we free to do anything.

Truth be told their plights do not matter. They only begin to matter when we as a people get past the idea that it's never that serious. But since that won't happen any time soon in the Kenyan timeline, their plights will have to matter to those of us who know their stories and know who they were before their ordeals with the wrong arm of the law. People such as myself; for maybe it wouldn't matter that much to me either were Al-Amin Kimathi not my mother's brother. That, fellow Kenyans, is the sad truth of our being. Until it touches you personally, it's never that serious.

Chips Funga v. Friends: With or Without Benefits?

2012-01-05T01:56:00.000-08:00

Much as 'clande' and 'chips funga' have taken over as the preferred Kenyan promiscuity jargon in the recent past, it is hard to deny that sleeping with friends is still as popular now as it was when it emerged; if not in concept, then certainly in practice. Casual sex has become the norm, and who better to help you out than someone you already know and have a harmonious relation with?

I realize that marrying theory to reality on the issue of cross-gender friendships is a feat I should not claim to have any authority or vested capacity to plausibly produce.Especially since I've had my sizeable share of Mwax myself - yaani Mpango Wa Kayndow'z. Anywho. Supposés have never stopped me ranting before, so no reason why they should start now. Let me state that I do not subscribe to the academy of thought that considers boys and girls being bffs as loving for free.

Nonetheless, allow me to posit that at least to my underdeveloped intuitive panorama, while it is not impossible as an actuality for such pure relations to exist and indeed succeed, it is tantamount to treading across a croc-infested river on dental-floss - of course some Guinness World Record-bent daredevil may have tried it, but woe unto him WHEN the floss decides to flaunt its weaknesses.

Such a statement is bound to discommode a few of my fellow Wajivuniao [1], whose theory it is that man and woman can be buddies and roll together like boys - or whatever other popular youth colloquialism befits such dreams. Pause and ask yourself, you who are at odds with my presumptive assertion, why it is that the affair of certain installments of benefits exist on the cross-gender hand of friendship while not at all featuring on the other. Unless of course you tip to the bisexual scale of relations, in which case your participation in this monologue defeats the premises of my purpose. You, my friend, can stop reading right about here.

Assuming we are now within the limits of male-female relations, I will further put it to you that we all have some experience or other - however inconsequential - of the other man or woman. One cannot take exception to cold hard fact, and in point of fact, the notion of friendship with benefits has become one of the 21st century's neologisms in the great dynamics that entail this relatively new rapport with the opposite sex.

Even whence effort has been invested to dot the i's and cross the t's on a friendship between Kimberly and Kimani, the triumph of such an arrangement is not at any rate exclusively dependent on the two parties. You see, had they a nuptial kind of agreement to declare theirs a 'strictly friendly' association, then, dare I say it might work. Might, and even then, only on the bedrock of a rather shaky premise, and the unreasonable fact that noone decided to spoil the party when the Rev unleashed the "speak now or forever hold your peace" clause. Like that will deter any go-getting mamacita from later on holding your man's 'piece'. Story for another day that.

Of course Kimani will have an environment with some sort of put-in on the progress of the liaison, aka my boys. And the boys will always have a world of influence on said liaison's success. Nothing breaks the mirror of lies a guy looks at a woman through than a mate going, "Waah, si ako down!?" Kimberly also has her own resident advisors, as part of whom she makes up the so-called 3 musketeers, aka the 300, for these women always come in 3s. It is amusing - indeed infuriatingly so - just how demanding it is to bank on these other mamaz to ignore the alluring urge to ~~tag on the guy's balls~~ interfere all the time. They will be sceptical, always trying to steer the rally car, even when their navigations clearly head straight into a sea of murk.

This is especially so when Kimberly and Kimani have recently relegated their Facebook relationship status from the throes of 'deeply in love' or whatever, yet decided to retain some level of cordiality. No offense, but exes trying to be friends is a painful and abject thing to witness; one I do not really know how to describe other than to say that it very much reminds me of this brain-damaged puppy I saw on YouTube trying to pick up a bone in its barely functioning mouth. Eventually he got it, but it was a troublingly sad sight.

In such a scenario, only fiction can conspire to assure your otherwise very alert acumen that both the involved parties are complementary in assessing their break-up and any prospects of a future together, albeit without being really together, if you catch my drift. I do not claim to be any sort of specialist on Psychology, but it is so mind-numbingly difficult to expect any two people to draw an exact same conclusive perspective on any situation, given that the set of experiences the dumper and the dumpee draw from are different. While Mohammed the Prophet and bin Laden the Bad Boy of Islam drew from the same Qu'ran, which in basic principle and virtue is a meticulous guide to proper living, that is as far as any comparison of their essentials can constructively go.

Does there exist any kind of contingency in such a bond? Because mattter-of-factly, situations are bound to change, and survival thus depends on a certain degree of readiness, an open affinity to adaptability that most of us are either unwilling to or incapable of developing. Soon Kimani has a Missus, Makini, and she will have her insecurities. Couple this with Kim's boyfriend - we shall call him Roy - exhibiting distrustful resentment of the chemistry shared by the Kims, and you have an eternal clouding ingredient of this boy-girlness shared by them, louring the horizons with not a soupçon of archetypal silver linigns in range. Like it or not, that is one reality check I am not simply dictating, but if you let me, would prefer to impose upon you.

Conclusion? Well there is no obligation for one dogmatically true and explicitly solid grand finale on this phenomenon. As previously stated, it is not only too dynamic but also intensely situational, and to have one general truth in forceful summary of the idea would be a relegation of personal principle and mutual commitment the likes of which amounts to no more than folly. One easy deduction does however bob into mind: it takes a lot of work to coin a relationship of sustainable development between any Kim and Kimani, without falling back onto the excesses of affectionate intimacy.

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Disclaimers ‽ ‽

1. While it may seem like I am pro completely ignoring friends' advice on 'matters relationship', soon enough you will realize that every rally car driver needs a trustee mate riding shotgun, occasionally yapping 'left!'...'right!' and so on. Absolute ignorance of friends' perspectives amounts to driving with your mind resolute on not steering left. The straight stretch of road clears within a pre-determined amount of time, and you find yourself stuck in a ditch, or caught up in a realm between hell and Shangri-la.

And trust me, by the time this eventuality comes to pass, there'll be no matey riding shotgun. Like Iyaz - how the hell do you pronounce this guy's name? - you'll find yoself solo in purgatory; that's a euphemism for death [for a certain Miss Bree's comprehension purposes :)] The sage way forward dictates that you listen and sift; garbage-in garbage-out leaves your system with some experience worth holding on to.

2. My significant other has no clue that I run this blog. It would be detrimental to my health if she were to stumble upon some of the 'aforestated' views, especially - as you might imagine - as concerns my mwax; your sustained lipsealerie would therefore be highly adviseable, if not possibly appreciated.

[1]

Wajivuniao kuwa Wakenya. Adapted from a popular Kenyan slogan "Najivunia kuwa Mkenya" i.e. "Proud to be Kenyan".

R.E.S. Pia C. Tunataka

2012-01-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

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I begin with somewhat of a semantic incongruity; no one woman is a b*tch. It is a loathsome word that is in most ways really unbecoming, a little like the stereotypical tenure that all men are dogs. In that respect, no woman should be called as such, much less so treated.

Of course, when it comes to men, at some point in this argument we have to wake up to the reality that not everyone around us is crazy. Just maybe, we could be the wacky ones. Sure some of the subscribers to the popular men-are-dogs complex belong in some special facility the likes of which has yet to be conceptualized, but if everyone around you thinks you’re a dog, you may quite well have missed the ape train, evolving from any one of an assortment of animalia families à la dental structure: 42. Prognosis – time you consulted your dentist.

In the same frame of mind, women do have the propensity to make friends – more oft than we might prefer – with that little b*tch called Drama. Certainly not all the time, and undoubtedly, some women are more acquainted with her than others. But do trust that this is one imaginary friend every clutch purse comes with as an accessory. For the most part it’s just a protozoan endoparasite, a fixed medium of harm cooped up harmlessly under her skin. Much like pepper spray, this bloodsucker’s call-to-action has its situational applications, and every ego-blooded male that has crawled under any lady’s skin has come head-to-ugly-head with her; and in the words of Terminator Schwarzenegger, she is one ugly m@*herf!ck$r.

Am sure we’ve all had a run-in with her...Dramaticus Queenopithecus or simply DQ by scientific nomenclature; that innate little Miss Boss-lady who coerces a woman’s hand to snap in a circle three times, or in any one of its multiples she deems fit for the brute in sight. The said brute in this case being under indictment over one of the many trumped-up charges she has constrained in her annals: from his simple negligence of the fact that she sat hours on end trying to hack a layered French pleat or some other new hairdo, to his asking an indelicate question, or worse still, his breaking her mirror.

The disconsolate look on one particular lady’s face – we’ll call her Sasha Vicious – when her then boyfriend unwittingly dropped her little ^∂∂mirror mirror on the wall^∂∂ would have led any competent consultant to come up with the conclusion that her image had forever been lost! Needless to say, her visible dejection was like moonlight, metamorphosing her into a she-wolverine in mere moments. Am sure you could do with a few more details on that one but am afraid it’d be a pointless endeavour; my stress on ‘then’ should suffice – her then boyfriend.

It's All About Me...Me, Me, Me!!

Mama-dramas have been a constant pain to the burdens of many a man’s minds, and to put it in greater context, consider the number of break-ups just before the ‘festive’ lovers' season.Valentine's ~~Sorry Excuse of a~~ Day. Of course the festivities all occur behind hermetically closed doors; whether the kitchen, bathroom, or more conventionally, zee boudoir. Audacious campus orgies may even transcend closed doors and end up in corridoors. But getting back to my point, lucid research results presented by my local bartender point to a time-honoured percentage increase in fatal relationship crashes this past month, and, he posits, they are projected to hit high point this coming not-so-Sunny day.

What’s wrong with this picture? Am sure the loud preceding words may incline many to feel a slight slant against the fairer sex. However, respect is two-way traffic. While women have their fair share of soap opera mini-productions – and many may be the reason their gentlemen are taking drives and flights away from them – we have to distinguish between cause and effect. And here I turn to the boys: fight a man over spilt beer if you must; discipline the unusually stupid bloke who slights your Missus – that is your prerogative; but clench your fists if you have to, to stop yourself from raising them in her direction as you tremor in fury. That, am sorry, is no prerogative of any man.

When a woman begins to feel like she’s safe behind a mosquito net, yet trapped with a single vampire hanger-on that may swoop at any moment of madness, then no one can fault her for exiting the system. Unfortunately, few actually do leave, and many will rationalize cases of such assault and battery with their mates’ intoxication, mitigating it with their calm nature in sobriety. Call me cynical, but romantic gests handed in as exhibits after a battering only materialize with plea bargain a forethought.

Seated at the local last night, I gave four different women the same scenario: that only two kinds of men existed in the world post-I Am Legend, the assumption being that they had to choose one. On the one hand, Don Quixote is the fairy tale romantic, treating his woman like a princess and making her feel wanted; but he has an alter ego, and thus his Don Juan tendencies, dogging on her behind the scenes. On the other we have Mono, Mr. One-Woman. By default he has no cheating bone in his body, but what he lacks in that bone he makes up for in bruising his one and only.

All four chose |Don Qui/Juan.

Disclaimer | This is neither my opinion nor is it my Editor's, that cheating should fly under the radar of vice; just the simple findings to a simplistic hypothesis weighing two evils to stumble upon the lesser one, and possibly the preferred one.

So this should be every serious commitment’s creed. R.E.S. Pia C. Tunataka. No man should have to live with earmuffs or plugs just to drown the drone of his mate’s racket; and no woman should have to cry or buy a crash-helmet to evade the swellings of a relationship. Same Sh*t Different Day? How’s about we just try No Sh*t Any Day?

Looking for a Memorable Holiday this Festive Season?

2011-12-09T00:55:00.000-08:00

The Kenyan Coast is divided into five major regions: the city of Mombasa, Malindi, Lamu, North and South Coast. Each of this has its own unique features and tourist attractions ideal for a Kenyan safari.

Lamu is Kenya’s answer to the French Riviera, with activities like dhow rides from Lamu town to Manda Island and Pier Jumping. It is full of real gems, but only if you know what you're looking for.

Malindi was founded by the Arabs in the early 13^th Century, with Vasco Da Gama being the first European visitor to set foot here, thus he erected his pillar to show his appreciation for the welcome he received. With its strong continental influences, you will be forgiven to think you are in a little piece of Europe.

Kiwayu Island gives a real meaning of privacy as it is an uninhibited island, making you feel as if you own a kind of paradise. There is no sight of beach boys, stone buildings, or even cars. Only a few local fishing crafts and sailing dhows. There is plenty to do on the island: sand yachting, snorkeling and dhow cruises; you could experience some local culture, arts and crafts at the nearby village. You could also just sunbathe on the beach or chill out in the elegant camp.

South Coast (Diani): With Kenya’s warm waters which make it the perfect place for diving, and a host of dive centers to choose from, you are spoilt for choice; wreck diving: the wrecks act as artificial reefs that attract an incredible proliferation of sea life, with an air of mystery and surprise as you may never know what is going to float out of the bulkhead or pothole. An underwater dive at Galu provides plenty of opportunities for amazing underwater photos. Located near Kisite Marine Park, Pilli-pipa offers snorkeling and diving activities, with 10 dive sites in the area.

Kipwepwe Island, located a few kilometers from Watamu provides an all aspect view of Island life, from coconut-tree climbing to fishing.

The Kenyan coast provides perfect weather and the most varied fish species from the banks of Lamu, Manda, Malindi, Watamu and Mtwapa thus making it an adventurous experience for tourists who want to try their hand at sport fishing. It would also be lovely to have a honeymoon safari in Kenya.

Near the coast is the Tsavo National Park, a great spectacle for any wildlife lover. The park is most famous because of the man eaters of Tsavo, which were two maneless male lions which terrorized the laborers who built the Kenya-Uganda railway.

Author’s Bio

Wambui Gitau is a Safari and Travel consultant at Explorer Kenya Tours & Travel, a Tourism and Safari Company based in Kenya. This includes; Lodge and camping safari, hotel bookings, luxury tented tours, wildlife and bird watching, family safaris, mountain climbing and bungee jumping. Visit Explorer Kenya for more information on safari in Kenya.

Early Man's Errant Ways

2011-07-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

Sheldon Cooper: The Big Bang Theory

For the purposes of this here enumeration of crazy episodes from a childhood past, the early hominid I once was will be referred to as ‘early man’, or simply em. À la Sheldon from the Big Bang, this here Homo novus keying the memories down will be upgraded to the status of ‘ze mien’.

§ Episode 1: G-Shaggy Chronicles

They say every great man has his eccentricities, and in my 4-year old eyes there was no greater man than my old man back in the day. On the one hand, there was the airforce uniform and the brilliant little model planes that garnished our apartment in a high-class suburb; on the other was his narcissistic drone, trying to get me and my siblings to speak our ‘native language’.

Not that we couldn’t understand the language; we did. We just did not feel the urge to straggle responding in it, when we had the luxury of a very sufficient Swahili and English to boot. So old man decides to take me ‘visiting’ with my grandma, and conveniently ‘forgets’ to take me back with him to Nairobi. Cue the longest 2 months of my life, stuck in what seemed like a veritable Kalahari Desert: no TV, no electricity, nothing but absolute culture shock.

Suffice to say that by the time my mum won the arm-wrestle to get me back to Nai, I could speak in tongues, riddles, proverbs and fables – all of them indigenous. After she had managed to convince me that she was my mother [see how dementedly hot the sun was?] this, among other sad things, is what I had to say to her as she ferried me home:

‘Kile kiRadio chenu chenye kilikuwa kinaonyesha tumtu, bado kiko?’
Tr: That big Radio you guys had that displayed little people...do you still have it?

Of course this was spoken in native tongue. Notice that I had clearly disassociated myself from my family, truly assimilated by my daily routine of speaking Kikuyu, grazing the cows, sitting around a fire, dancing to the mwomboko and all that jazz. Actually, make that ‘and all that wandindi’ or whatever other instrument was at play during early man’s time at Shagz.

§ Episode 2: British Kikuyu Tobacco

So em gets back to Nairobi. Actually it was a new em, one that was now shunned by friend and foe alike, for speaking in uncity-like fashion. At least that was my nursery class teacher’s analysis when my mum paraded me in front of her for a prelude to 8-4-4. “Seriously madame, do you live in Nairobi?” Apparently, speaking fluent and exclusive Kikuyu at St. Marks Westlands was unheard of.

Which brings me to the incident on Britain. Old man was away on Airforce duty – as usual. Me and ma are cruising to Nairobi from Nyeri. My loud mouth has been running parallel to the matatu’s speedometer since we left Nyeri. The ‘guests’ are clearly entertained by unsolicited stand-up comedy [kids could stand in the ‘aisle’ of a face me- face you.]

Stoking the fire with relative ease, one of the passengers ignores my ma’s pleading eyes, asking “Na babako ako wapi?”[Where's your father?]

“Arathire Birikaini.”

That’s kikuyu for ‘he went to the kettle’. To the kettle kinda sounds like Britain. At least it did, to a kid high on Kikuyu Tobacco. I would certainly have forgiven my ma if at this point she’d thrown me outta the window to salvage some dignity, yet she did not. Not even after I went on to narrate how the dress and hair she was in were not hers; that she’d borrowed them from my aunt after our visit, coz we hadn’t planned on sleeping over and she had nothing to change into. Should I add that I pulled the wig off her scalp as Exhibit A?

Episode 3: Johnson & Johnson

I know this episode sounds dirrty. But it really technically isn’t, so get your minds outta the gutter.

In a deluded way, em was quite a helpful kid. This one time, ma had gone outta the house and left some water boiling in preparation for Ugali. Em was about 10, and in his mind, he could cook Ugali. By the time ma came back, there was something cooking; only it wasn’t exactly what you’d call food. However, I can –and I do – claim to have started cooking at the age of 10.

Much in similar fashion did the Johnson episode occur when em was about 4. Ma had just washed my 2-year old sis, and was in the kitchen getting her something to eat. So here’s the kid in her crib, and em figures out he can be of some assistance to ma. He takes a tub of Johnson’s Scented Baby Jelly and proceeds to smear it all over her tiny body, sparing no millimetre of her body. And I mean none. Had ma not come in when she did, em may have inadvertently ended up in juvee for suffocating his sibling with Johnson’s Baby toiletries.

§ Episode 4: Bilingual Tails

I remember this one time when I was out playing with friends on a steeply inclining hill next to our apartments. Much as ma had tried stopping this, her punishments later in the evening hardly eclipsed sliding fool’s speed down a grassy hill. Oh, the thrill!

Now my 4-year old sister was quite the snitch back then. It hardly took her two seconds from the second she spotted ma coming home from work for her to scream, ‘Mum! Babi bado anakurutuka na matako!’ Must have been her payback for episode 3 above.

Much as my shaggy behaviour was uncivilized in a westlandish setting, hunter-gathering skills learnt from episode 1 did however come in handy when we played ‘cha mama cha baba’. Every once in a while we actually cooked, and I recall a particular incident involving a pan, a jerrycan of stolen cooking oil, and a tin full of 'hunted and gathered' nguya. The grasshoppers we ate raw...

§ Episode 5: How early man almost Killed his Mother

Being as I am part of the soft core that is our current Generation Y, at around the time I was 5, children my age could tell you one thing for sure. ‘Nyayo’ was a synonym for president and power; hence such absurd inquisitive phrases as “Museveni ni Moi wa Uganda?” Any kid could also tell you that we loved ‘maziwa ya Nyayo’.

So when I vociferously answered “Si ni ule mwenye aliua Ouko?” to the question “Moi ni nani?” you may understand how I quite nearly killed my mother. Especially since we were walking across a bridge filled with people, who immediately scampered away lest they also get taken away when the Nyayo House Police got there.

Back then, mentioning my dad and the president in one statement seemed like a really good way to state an argument. Like:

“Moi havai short. Papa pia havai short. Hata mimi sivai short!”

And to illustrate my point, this once I actually succeeded in almost flushing my shorts down the toilet drains.

§ Episode 6: Nursing School

As you might imagine, by the time em got to a schooling age, he very badly needed nursing for the head wound many thought he had. Let me introduce you to “The Lunchbox” to further illustrate my point.

On my first day at St. Marks, my ma hadn’t had the time to get me a lunchbox. I did not even have uniform, coz that would have defeated the purpose of tricking me into school. You see, I was not very keen on education in a classroom setting. The world was my playground and occasional teacher. Give that up to sit in a classroom. No way!

So instead, ma told me that we were going to the mall. The mall, unlike the classroom, was part of the world, so there was little to argue about, until I realized that this new alien land I’d arrived at was no mall. Boy did I throw a fit!

Long story short, eventually I settled down and actually enjoyed my day. So the next day I made ma take me shopping for a lunch box before school. Venue: Uchumi. Purpose: Lunchbox. Only question was...which lunchbox? Which is exactly what ma asked after em had opened up nearly all the lunchboxes at Uchumi, each time shaking his head in disappointment.

“Kwani unataka gani?” asked ma, bemused.

“Nataka yenye iko na chips, na bacon, na sausage, na...”

Tr: Which one are you looking for? - I want the one that has chips, bacon, sausage...

§ Episode 7: Em Juan

Much as em was a bit of a potato-head [see episode 6 above] he was actually quite good with the ladies. A veritable em Juan. Having had this thing with Princess Patra since the age of about 2, he was quite experienced when he got to KG1. Forget that Princess Patra was a TV ad, coz that’s beside the point. Anyway, if your name is Comfort and you were in St. Marks between 1991 and 1993, you owe me one.

“Comfort ana lips tamu!” I declared one evening to ma, having spent the afternoon ‘sleep session’ locking lips with this elusive gal. And don’t even get me started on the twins Caroline and Christine; first time I declared my undying love...to both of them, simultaneously, after having played ‘cha mama cha baba’ during ‘sleep session’. Come to think of it, sleep session was awesome!

§ Episode 8: Tusker Pee-Jet Fame

Sons tend to look up to their fathers in the early stages of childhood. In fact , psychoanalysts can tell you all about the raging hormones that influence a boy’s Oedipus complex. Em had his own complex; the urge to burudika baada ya kazi like his father did, with a Tusker.

Now a certain street-boy – we’ll call him Master Sugu – had become part of em’s neighbourhood right around this time. He lived with an ambitious couple next door who believed they could erase the past 10 years of his life in the streets and turn him into a proper citizen. Soon, however, Master Sugu was running a cartel of pranks on the neighbourhood kids, having already gathered a following from the prior estate bullies.

That was how em ended up drinking what he thought was a Tusker – despite it having an oddly whiffy scent of ammonic barley. Think that’s disgusting? It doesn’t compare to the time, aged 2, when the correlative functions in his little brain convinced him that there was a sausage in his potty.

Conclusion

Truth be told, we change a lot in our evolution into adulthood; I do however feel rather certain that if em had somehow found a portal to this day and age, meeting Yule Mbois Mndialala face to face would have done traumatically irreparable damage to his already messed up psyche.

Actually, come to think of it, seems like early man was merely a prelude of things to come in the evolution that became ze mien. And quite frankly, the idea that a little monstrous fiend the likes of em may yet spring forth from some union in my future scares the living crap outta me!

Sabina's Joy: Experiencing a Hooker's mind...and Bed

2011-06-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

In the marriage that wed me to my humanity, my brain usually accepts the typical Kenyan stay at home single mum type of role. Broke, bitter, easy to agitate and open to anything my humanity has to offer. I have to say it's a role it has learned to play with such natural ease, so as you might imagine, impulsiveness comes very naturally to me. I don't think about it. In the words of Prince Nike II, son of His Majesty King Adidas the first, I 'just do it'.

However, as I walk behind Mystique, watching her sultry curves wave to her every step, I suddenly can't help that deer-in-the-headlights gut reaction you get the second before a mugging; when you realize that someone's walking right behind you (an analogy I draw from bitter experience). I muse at the complex simplicity of emotions the past 15 minutes had taken me through. Fear of mistaken identity (and the mob justice that would follow in the way of taunts from my pals on my SJ going ways); relief once I was in; anticipation of what lay ahead; repulsion for the girl who lay legs parted ahead; bemusement at the price of beer; lust, surprisingly, for Mystique...well actually now that I consider it, it shouldn't have been that surprising to discover a well-marketed sales pitch in a brothel. Fast forward through the thrill of actually paying for a room with a --~~whore,~~ ~~poko,~~ ~~langa,~~ ~~harlot,~~ ~~kuro,~~ ~~malaya~~, ~~streetwalker~~ - check whichever name tickles your arrogance-- and we get to the door.

Truth be told, before I got to Sabina Joy, my mind had edited an entire script on Kenyan brothels, set in a dingy neighbourhood with crammy little rooms. I saw layers of used CDs piled at one corner, strongly pervaded with the kinda putrefaction it takes a compost heap to order Kenyan highlands into fertile submission. I saw women trampse around dressed in next to nothing, cornering every potential client like street hawkers; "Bei ni saw moja customer..."

Nothing had, or perhaps ever could have, prepared me for the impact of the next one hour of experience on a bed with a prostitute. It was a bit like stepping off a state-of-the-art spaceship, and onto the blackened piece of pandora swimming dead in the middle of her eyes.

I have agonized on a way to describe what happened next that would depict the very essence of what it felt like, yet it still feels like I am somehow trapped by that look. The look she gave me as she stood in the middle of the room the very moment I walked in and spoke to her. It was really out of surprise that I uttered those words. Surprise at how quickly she had stripped down to her underfashions, styled in the frugal ways of our very own Ngara's Secrets.

As I studied her solitary figure, crouched in the middle of the room taking her shoes off while her jeans sat on the bed neglected, it occurred to me that I had not even paid her, yet here she was already kicking into gear, her servant body and nonchalant appearance set to their workplace default. What would stop me from paying her once I'd had the conventional shot? That was the precise question I asked. Ok. Maybe not in that wording.

It seemed, for a moment, like the lights went off in her eyes, short-circuited - as she would later reveal - by memories of deals gone sour. She reached for her trousers, and only then did I realize what that thoughtless statement might have sounded like to her. I quickly pulled out a two hundred shillings note and watched the sun come out from behind the clouds that had momentarily clouded her eyes, a curious sparkle replacing the glaze in their brown.

She was now seated on the bed, unwrapping the condom in what I can only imagine was her norm, waiting for me to relieve myself of the abundance of my clothes. So I seat right next to her and ask, "Na hiyo saw mbili ni ya nini?" Mystique explains the rules of the shot to me. It's plain and very simple. Two hundred shillings buys you one position - missionary, I gather - and should you choose any more extravagant positions (say doggy, for instance) you pay an extra two hundred bob. Think of it as a car hire service...the 200 bob would be to rent the car, the extra 200 bob would be kinda like fueling the car. The farther you wanna go, the more rwabays you'd have to spend.

Yet that was not the whole story. If you chose to drive the rental, there was a time limit to it, kinda like a charge per day. Ideally, that two sock buys you around ten minutes, or whatever time it would take you to...well...you get the point.

By this time I had pulled out a cigarette, a bit taken aback at how clean the room actually was. Save for a few daddy long legs and roaches popping in and out of the darker crevices in the room's floor, it was actually rather decent, and far from anything I had pictured on my way in. Pulling a hefty draught from the stick, I mused at the irony of it all, triggered by a conversation I'd recently had with a friend who refers to the brand of cigarettes I smoke as Sigara ya Malaya (SM).

Having agreed that I would pay her the equivalent of two shots for a drive through her mind, she sits back, still in her drawers, and tells me how she often gets in to trouble with drunks who take their sweet time with the shot, then an hour later decide not to foot the bill. Guys who complain that they came too quickly, so they should be allowed a free encore. Funny thing that. Guys have a thing with directions. We take great care not to ask for them, and Mystique claims that if any of her clients actually did, she could easily guide them through the ten minutes to their fruition.

Campus guys, apparently, had given her a fair deal of trouble. This one time she was desperate to make some cash. It was kinda like a 'last call', the hour when many Kenyan hookers will sleep with any man anywhere and cut their losses after a bad run of business. She'd been drinking with a couple of UoN guys at the SJ pub, and they wanted to leave without taking the shot. So she asks where they're staying, having figured out that they did not want to pay for a room there, and offers to go with them if they pay her 500 bob each.

When they get to Hall 6 (fiction alert), however, and the services are rendered as promised, the guys - now playing on Home ground - decide not to pay her. Cue the conversion of the guy's room into a minibrothel, with Mystique having come up with a plan to make up for lost cash. It was just before Campus exams at UoN began, and it would seem that many of the guys there were on some sort of msusio wa ngono, for as soon as they heard that there was a gal in Hall 6 offering free shots at a hundred bob each, the entire queue for lunch shifted to Kenny's room.

Curious as I was to hear more, however, I tried to remain on course and asked her about @Suenairobi. As I'd pretty much expected, she knew nothing about Nairobi Nights, save for her very own rather interesting version of it. She did however open up about her friends who stole from clients, justifying the fact that they drug customers and rob them clean to make up for days when they themselves got the wrong end of the stick, costing them the serious side of a thousand bob or two for services rendered. It's all simple logic, really; kinda like Kobil hiking petrol prices when the government raises the fuel levy, and holding them when the levy goes down. Or matatu drivers charging 500% the usual fare when it rains...

As we walked out of the room an hour later, I caught a few glimpses from some of her workmates; they had this "he's a 60-minute man" thing going on in their eyes. I smiled, beat a hasty exit and disappeared into the Nairobi crowds. And loath as I am to admit it lest you think this mug smug, I had chosen to go out of my way to make a prostitute's day. I did. And I will do it again soon...

BEER & CHARACTER - Just another email forward

2011-06-24T10:59:00.001-07:00

I received this email forward and it made my day in more ways than one...My bet is it'll do the same with yours. Few edits hapa kule kama kawaida. Ps: I drink the Arthur...

Did you ever know that the beer you take defines your character?...Well...my brief research has confirmed so and here we go....

This is for the mlevi mwenyewe, the guy that doesn't get drunk. If you see a guy taking Guinness Kubwa kwa club, huyo ni msee wa kunywa vitu zingine za ajaabu akiwa mtaani, the sort of Napoleon, Kane Extra na King King. The guy has landed on Guinness kwa bar coz its the most lethal drink there. It is also claimed it has hidden libido powers; guys are advised to take three Guinnessess before heading home for their conjugal rights. So if you see a guy alone drinking Guinness, just know hes getting lucky tonight.

If it's a chick taking a Guinness, achana na yeye. Those are the types we call wrong numbers. Those that go to Monte Carlo and Club Chemil for reggae sessions...na anaeza kupiga ngumi if you touch her inappropriately.

Ahhh, Tusker, easily the most consumed brand in Kenya. Guyz who take tusker enjoy their time, enjoy their beer, and usually down it with nyam chom. They are the sort of people you hear entered a bar and left 36hrs later walking straight. Are easily identifiable with their huge vitambis / dumboz.

AND there is the other Tusker consumer who doesn't belong there. Will usually order a Tusker when in nice hang out joints to portray the image of being a gentleman. These are the type of people who frequent backstreet pubs huko Riverroad for their dosage of Keg and some funny poisons before proceeding to the nice joint. Are the sort of guys who get really wasted and start puking after four Tuskers coz that mixture is like oil and water, it's never going to happen.

A chile taking Tusker is just confused, most probably ni chips funga.

White Cap Lager, Light

Not every Tom, Dick and Harry's beer; it's got class with its name. So don't be surprised if your local doesn't stock it. And if it stocks it, that crate might stay there for months and will be consumed only when other beers are out of stock, and it's 12 midnight when guys are higher than kites. Belongs to the category called reserve beer.

Consumers of this brand want to establish themselves as people who have made it; in most cases, they've actually made it in life. So if you are a struggling mlevi who drinks on credit, this beer is not for you. You may, however, go for the smaller deadlier and cheaper brother, Allsopps.

The drink that is associated with 'class and sophistication'. Loads of nonsense I must say; people who drink this beer just want to stand out of a crowd, and Sierra beer also falls in this class. These are typically the people who run to every other new offer that hits the market, like the new zain 3 bob calls. If a Steam engine was packed in a trendy green bottle, Tusker malt guyz would have switched alliances faster than you can say 'mayai mboilo'.

So next time you go out, be wary of that chick you're tuning whos drinking Tusker Malt, she's more likely to be sliced. Most guyz drink this stuff to create the impression of a cool guy, but once he hits the usual backstreet bars, utashangaa vile Ka-half ya KC huisha na sip tatu.

Yeah, the typical jamaaz beer, and most probably always high all the time. These are dudes and duddetes who lived the mad session jams, were in boarding school bla bla bla, etc etc etc. To sum it up, all confused teenagers and campus students take this beer. And be wary of Pilsner takers...these are the people who are all over the floor dancing some styles whose origins only God Knows; they are the dudes who think they can slice your fiancee with their dance moves, the guys who puke all over the toilets...yeah you get the point.
Only silly and immature people take Pilsner. And the leading distributor of this brand has to be Tacos, a silly and immature nightclub.

For the ladies ambao wako na nyege, who need to get laid that night and soonest as possible, hata kama ni kwa gari, bora hiyo shuma iingie. Guys who take this stuff are on high grade weed or something; research hasn't come up with a logical explanation for this. New records have been set with this brand by broke ladies who are out to be bought drinks. Sample these statistics.

Longest duration to consume one bottle. Wait for it.... 8 hours!

Highest number of girls sharing one bottle: 5 ladies (from Buruburu, he he...Mutulu!)

Survival tactics: dancing all night, preferably next to loaded jammaz.

drinking with straws, refilling with water, swapping half empty bottles with full ones.

Most horrific moments: The waiter taking your bottle while still a quarter way full.

Merriest statement: Waletee hawa wasichana mbili mbili, ama u want how many?

For reserved ladies who'll get wasted slower than their Black Ice counterparts, but will still get laid anyway. Has a survival tactic, though rarely used. And that's refilling it with Ice Berg, you wouldn't notice the difference in those dark pubs you frequent.

Finally, if you partake any of the undermentioned concoctions, then you are definitely a kamlevi in the making. Scratch that. A Major Mlevi in the Made!

Napoleon aka naps, napizo, Emperor, Nappy Boy
Kenya King aka king king,
Visa aka ndauo aka maathai
Keg aka cupling
Kane Extra
Ice Berg
Black and White aka greatwall etc

You are the type that goes to clubs only when wasted enough to see double; the type that goes to bars to dance whole night till morning light; the type that gets wasted at backstreets before venturing for lap mwenda in clubs; sportsman is definitely your preferred cancer stick; and often the word "half life" (half a cigarette saved for later) is equated into that cancer stick; you probably know the pickpockets in clubs if you are not one; you probably drink two beers mpaka asubuhi; the type that harasses women on dance floors, the type that pick up fights in bars etc etc. The list goes on and on till Uhuru and Ruto confess. Yes, I'll wait. In short, you are the type that make people not to enjoy their drinks and nights out.

So whatever your choice, go on, get wasted, I'll definitely be judging you by the pint you drink.

Of Bargains with Kenyan Hookers, Sabina Joy and @Suenairobi's Inspiration

2011-06-20T15:52:00.001-07:00

Is there a respectable term for a prostitute? A sorta politically correct way to refer to them? Can the word 'respectable' actually sit comfortably in the same sentence as 'street-walker'? Is there even any real or imagined justification for selling your body to make a quick buck? And just who is Susan Kahumbura, aka @suenairobi?

These are some of the questions that drove me to Sabina Joy last week Tuesday. Well, actually seeing as am still tarmacking, let's say they 'walked' me there. So I get to Eureka Highrise building, directly across the road from Kencom House. It still amuses me how a building that hosts perhaps the oldest and most notorious Kenyan lare for the oldest and -- perhaps -- most notorious profession could be called 'Eureka Highrise'. It kinda describes the whole experience of sleeping with a prostitute, does it not?

'Eureka!' thinks Yule, standing outside Sabina Joy with his 21st digit on a high rise...'I've found it!'

Anywho, from the get-go it was a bit of a conundrum for me: what if someone I know sees me? What will they think? At all of 12 noon, here I was sober as Mutunga, albeit spotting dreadlocks, heading into an infamous brothel...dressed in a trench coat no less! I would never hear the end of it.

So I use that old nursery school verse for road safety. 'Look right, look left, look right again...when the street is clear (of faces that may recognize you and / or tell your old man), run into Sabina Joy...'

Step 1, check! Good thing am not really active on Foursquare, coz the temptation to tweet '@french_freddy is now mayor of Sabina Joy' would have been too great to resist. Wonder who I'd have replaced as mayor though...probably some washed up also-ran Kenyan politico.

The stairs guiding my way up the building were a bit of what I expected really, having read Nairobi Nights avidly for a while now. Drab little steps absorbing me in, intoxicating me with the new life I was getting into, wrapped around a hint of darkness I found rather unnerving, and quite reminiscent of a City Council 'shuttle' I had quite recently occupied.

Like the bright little fellow I sometimes am, I deduce on the 2nd floor that I'm finally there. There's this tired looking young woman -- actually, girl would be more appropriate -- seated with her legs spread open (she was in jeans, nkt!) outside the entrance. She sees me and immediately brightens up, flashing me a crooked -- and somewhat telling -- smile. Eureka. I have indeed found the fabled SJ!

Having decided to avoid the scary looking girl, I walk through the entrance and into a flurry of activity. There's a corridor leading left and right, and another entrance directly ahead, leading to what can only really be Mututho's liquor stash. Who else in their right mind sells Guinness Kubwa at 150 bob smack in the middle of town?

That's right around the time I saw her. In truth, I hardly stood a chance when she abandoned her big brown eyes on mine. She could have been a sassy girl strutting on campus, or another wiggling her ample goodies on a dancefloor. Yet here she was, shacked up with her fellow workmates in the corridor, teasing smiles, her bosom clearly trained on one target. Me.

Evade and retreat engaged.

'Twende shot?' Straight to the point, she -- we'll call her Mystique-- asks me whether we should book a room. My mind's playing tricks on me, and I nearly forget the disingenuous reason that brought me here in the first place, confunded by her set of Fast Moving Consumer Goods. I mumble a quick no, then circle the entire corridor, taking the alien surroundings in. Yet another girl, hardly as fine as the last, tries to egg me towards the pit latrines for a 'shot' as I approach the bar.

Having scoured the entire floor by now, I shift my attention back to Mystique. She watches with an I-told-you-so smirk on her face as I approach her.

'Room ni mangapi?' I enquire on how much a room would cost, adding that I'd like to buy some beer as well. She cordially explains that we could pay 500 bob for the private rooms upstairs (where they serve beer to customers before Mututho hour) and by her own account, spend the entire day up there. Oh, and that'll be 500 for me too, she adds.

A thousand bob? That's bloody expensive, I think to myself, knowing full well what brought me here.

'Na hizo room zingine?' I interrupt, and Mystique proceeds to tell me how those 'public' rooms are always on demand with customers looking for a quick -- and at 250 per room, cheaper -- shot. My Kenyan bargain gene kicks in, and I opt for the 250, haggling her price to 200 as well, for my trustee Nairobi Nights says I can get her price down that much.

Done deal. We go to the counter; I enable prostitution for the first time in my life, get the keys to a room, and a pack of Trust condoms. Walking a few paces behind her, we head towards the shot room....

(Continues here)

Of Kenyan Tarmackers and Our Torn Shoes

2011-06-10T15:43:00.001-07:00

A series of small, weak doses of thought occurred earlier on tonight that brought with it a debt of clarity I feel not only endowed but rather obliged to share with you. It all began with a post by Nanjira, partly about the quick burst of rain yesterday. What followed, however, was a scene from a bad Kenyan movie...the kind we live through every day...

Setting

Boy with comp replies to Nanjira's post predicting the usual hike in budgetary allocations by Jav (Public Service Vehicle) conductors, claiming the parting clouds would put a dent to their overactive imagination. Boy recently cleared Varsity, and is currently 'tarmacking' for an internship...boy's sole is as a result a mere -- make that very mere -- slice between foot and mud. And no that is not funny.

Puny Thought # 1

Of course the traffic jam happened anyways, so credit puny thought 1 to me. Let's say my mental biceps did not exercise nearly enough on that conclusion.

Puny Thought # 2

I live somewhere along Mombasa Road, and simply put, the whole motorcar industry in Kenya convenes on this road every so often. Traffic in town, thus, meant traffic on Mombasa Road for me. So I opted to go for Jogoo Road. Enter puny thought 2, coz Mombasa Road actually had no traffic.

Puny Thought # 3

I chose to buy lunch. That's one dose of thought this tarmacker -- who also has no phone -- can not afford to have. End result? Tarmacker has exactly 50 bob, fare home on a normal day. Accounting for normalcy in Kenya...not a good idea. And you can stop trying to guess where I live right about here [¡]

Puny Thought # 4

Mat drivers won't hike fares. Yeah. Right. Stupid move? Lemme rephrase that; Economy of Scales -- or something like that -- clearly indicates why this was a stupid move.

Puny Thought # 5

So after cutting through the footbridge at Railways, I get into this mat at Capital Centre. There are days I've prayed for rain just so that I could shower, but today is not one. I am in no mood for the clouds' idea of a joke...then kange (conductor) has the audacity to take my entire 50 bob. Context: Msa road has bo traffic...it's usually 10 bob at most. Freddy 4: kange 1.

Puny Thought # 6

Jav is outta diesel. The driver's charged 100 bob for the ride from tao, but decided to spare some coins by not fuelling the car. WTH were you [not] thinking Mr Jav-man?

Puny Thought # 7

Jav is an automatic gearbox, so 'shtua'ing it is not an option even when the fuel gets there. Question Mr Jav-man: so this petrol station we passed 50m back...WTH did you think it was? An irrigation plant? A sewerage plant? What, it did not occur to you that your fuel was low and pretty much needed as we passed the bloody station?

Puny Thought # 8

Kange n Jav-man can't start the car, and won't get us another jav. It's past 10pm...no refund either. Ever heard of mob justice messieurs Jav?

Puny Thought # 9

One of the passengers gets the jav started. Cue stupid remarks from the rest.

"Tunataka Hardship allowance..."

"Tupeleke hadi kwetu..."

"Me nataka mechanic's fee..." chimes the guy who got the engine running.

So what exactly did you passengers expect? For them to yield and just pass you their obese wallets?

Puny Thought # 10

I alight at the gate to the apartments, despite needing a smoke after the ordeal. Walk all the way to the shops, only to remember that I have no damn money!

Moral of the story? Buy my own car! Ok. Now to be more reasonable, let's say always carry around triple my usual fare in the evening.

Fortress of Solitude - Ode to a Killer Butt

2011-06-09T05:22:00.000-07:00

Am looking at you

You're staring right back
Blowing smoke in my face
Strange how it all began

One moment I'd never touch you
The next, you were all up in me
Rushing blood to my head
Strange relations we developed

Am talking to you
You stare back in silence
You were always dumb like that
Strange how he's looking at us

I think he wants some of you
I wouldn't mind sharing though
Here boss, let's spread the fun
Stranger things have happened

I should dump you right now
I know how you plan to hurt me
Yet I place you between my lips
Strange how you make me feel

Am I going crazy?

Yielding to such destructive bliss?
Defying the very basics of my own logic?
Strange...am actually losing it

Who else talks to a cigarette?
Things we do for lust
Need a new passtime
Strange...gimme another kiss sweetie

Curious thing, this little puff.

Quitte pas chérie

2011-06-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

Tu me dit que oui,
mais tes yeux
en dit long sur le sujet

Je suis au plus bas
mon coeur touche le fonde
pris entre marteau et enclume

Toi, solide, dure comme le roc
moi, battant de l'aile

De jour en jour
seul mes souvenirs
de nous me poussent

Je recolle bien les temps
qu'ils faisaient
Le temps qui passait
comme du sable
dans un sablier

Tout se déroulait vite
sûrement plus que j'en voulais
Au bord de larmes je prie
oui, je l'ai même commencé pour toi

Que tu reste...car notre Amour,
oui, c'est l'amour avec un grand A
Un amour que l'on a,
que l'on tremble à perdre

L'amour qui se finit
même pas à la mort
Un amour qu'on respirait
moi et toi
quitte pas mon chou
Tu me le casserais
comme une bouteille inutile.

A Road Trip with Nini

2011-06-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

First Published on www.qampusblog.com ©. Same writer. All rights reserved

|

Hills on the horizon
Their background the Elgon
Tin houses rise to the fore
One, particularly, haloed with a cross
Tens gathered in colour and song
The music struggles
To drown the van’s rev

As he too struggles
To drown images from past dark

Lance-a-lot jousting
With nightly grace
Wait, he digresses
Was her name Grace?

His eyes stray from pen to plant life
Sparing some time to the road
Negotiations enter, bringing them
To a mutual compromise
Resting his eyes on her plum physique

Warm, that fuzzy feeling down below
Goofy, that knowing look in his gaze
Malice, that intent written all o’er her face
Reason, that which they choose to ignore.

As she leans over, leans in, lips torn asunder
A beam spread ‘cross her thriving brow
She bottles his immediate need with a smack
Reveling in his look, wild bliss plastered over

Hormonal thermostat approaching unbearable status
Beads of perspiration, thumps of palpitation,
Neither from the blaring heat,
No sign points to precipitation

The Beauty of the Grande Finale

Ah, Nini’s Jetco rest, a quickie face wash
And then some…more hyperventilation
Drags of puff, he breathes in
Hmmph; the mothership shifts on her seat
Microscorpions relocate hastily ‘pon the desolate tract

Tiny tingles trace up his belly

With each mini step, buckets of sweat spring forth
Quiet times, serene vanity, and occasional grunts
Grey matter sounds the carry-on call

Settings changed, curtains close, and clothes drop
Hmmphs replaced with a barrage of oomphs
Road trip forgotten, engine shut, and restroom open
Not to mention the aahs! Careful not to advertise their activities
Well, least not too loudly

All Calm on the Travelling Front

Both running in parallel, their units converging
Near the deserted ferry landing
Burdens of intellect fleetingly disregarded
The motel beckons, and awareness tips his hat to them.

Corporate | Hamu

2011-06-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

Basi waingia na ustadi wako wote

Their uncompromising expectation counters

Huku uchanga wako mle ukijibwaga

They flaunt their vast past experience

Unaw'tangazia balagha miradi yako

They intervene with their empty rhetoric

Uamuzi rasmi - uvumilivu...wakikubambua

They burden you with heavier workloads

Mori wazidi kupigana...usididimie, wasema

Even as their 'leadership' slows you

Geuka; ruka; shuka; wakuhamasisha eti

Chiding you every step with archaic notions

An'fanya; an'sema; hak'fanya; hak'enda

They buy drinks out of your sorrow

Kidogo waonekana huku kule kunyong'onyea

They condemn your downcast attitude

Hivi basi unania shingo'pande kunyenyekea

Plastic smiles and a detached ear

Kumbe cheo kupanda, ngazi kanuni kushuka

Your Corporate hamu done honga'd you

Done made your Corporate ham the Corporate's harm

Schizofrenetic Conundrum

2011-05-31T05:17:00.000-07:00

More than once I have been asked why I started the Diary of a Serial Schizo. More than once, more than just many a times, the response has left many at pains to grasp their minds around it. Perhaps I should try key it down in some sorta logically aligned fashion that could help add some grain to the cobs and wipe away the webs. And to do this, I see no better way than to go back in history.

In 2008, The Pawns of Reality came to be. Not unlike many in a similar position, losing a close companion changed the essential mouldings of my future; the fundamentals, however, remained pretty much the same. I was lucky to grow up in an environment that was once classy but degenerated to void really early in my life. Not too early for the ‘bourgeois’ foundations not to take hold in me, but early enough that shedding them was not as difficult as it might usually be.

Soon enough the only thing that kept me and my siblings in school was nature, for nature dictates that survival befits the fittest; and in the eyes of a dogged businessman turned educationist, we were indeed the fittest. That is to say that we stayed in school despite financial constraints because he was unwilling to lose his best students in our respective classes.

The school itself was situated in Central Province, what seemed a social desert juxtaposed to our former places of abode in the expressive jungle Nairobi was even in the early 90s. Quite an inconceivable contrast to my buzzing young mind; but one that allthemore presented an appealing challenge to fit into. Fast forward through the dusted days and grazed nights; we once again found ourselves flung into quasi-metropolitan bliss, in the way of an illustrious academy in Central province.

The wont of many an affluent family is to buy the best education for their young ones, and this factor meant we got to rub shoulders with the allure of glamour once more. My eager mind now began to learn from them what rumours the new Nairobi had come up with; among them was something that sounded pretty much like Swahili, but had the knack to shock you every once in a while with something linguistically unseemly. Hence my first acquiescence to the acquaintance turned lifelong friend that is sheng’.

I still recall wondering why they were calling me buda, which the kamusi aptly informed me was a term of respect for grandpas. Don’t even get me started on the phenomenal marrow, derived from murram to refer to Githeri. KuBielo, kuGoot kudinya...it was all Greek to me.

You can probably guess why we called it murram

These kids also introduced me to the idea that it was not the fact that you spoke English, but how you spoke it that mattered. For the first time I heard of shrubbing – better yet kung’oa and kushema. I had been good at writing the colonist’s language, but now I was informed that I had to speak like him too. By the time they called me to Starehe Boys’ Centre and School, I was rid of the rural influence in my language delivery; I still, however, had a shrub or two in me. Not the entire bush, but a few well-pruned branches still cropped up in some circumstances.

Circumstance 1: A sneaky mate asks me who was famous for the Moonwalk. Eminem, says I.

Circumstance 2: Another sneakate mentions that his favourite part in ‘You are Everything’ is Ja Rule’s rap. Being an ardent Sisqo fan, I proceed to argue with him:

Shrub: Zi! Hiyo ngoma ni ya Sisqo! Ja Rule hayuko!

Sneakate: Ngebe! Ja Rule ndo hurap!

Shrub: Niko na tape ya Sisqo na hiyo ngoma ni yake!

He proceeded to explain to me a little foreign ideology known as a collabo. That essentially crushed my sterring swagger for a couple of days (sterring was a shagz mundez way of saying star, adapted from the fact that we always saw great actors’ names after the word Starring; ‘mi ndio sterring’ and later ‘mi ndio sterrow’ were thus common utterances).

Anyway, life in Starch was the usual, a story for some other day. Once I got out, however, I realized that I had two personalities fighting within me. The good guy and the bad guy; the Don Juan and the Don Quixote; the wit and the geek; the loud mouth and the loner; the conformist and the free spirit.

I also realized that for me, rules were made to censor living, not regulate it. Religion became a rumour replaced with Rebellion in reason. Authority became a menace replaced with Autonomy in action. The only thing I chose to believe in was right and wrong, and my ability to know the difference.

Before Varsity happened, I also realized my affinity for women and their place in society; not every woman, but many a woman. The oppressed lot; the resilient kinds who stick by their brutes and hide behind the lilac embers of non-existent love, ignoring the grey ash grounded all around them. I was at a bit of a loss; I wanted to be that devious Casanova with a Gregory Housy MD in chutzpah, but constantly found myself dragged back by this ‘burden’; this conscience that made me wanna be the good guy.

Fast forward through the trips and traps that the stupid little fat crimson imp masterminded to ambush my path, and you get to 2008. I had just lost my mum, in my first year of campus. And suddenly came the urge to write, to put the pain on paper and shred it up. By mid-2009, courage finally mustered me, and posted this rant full of bile on Facebook. Suffice to say that I never looked back.

It was only last year, however, that I finally got the jilt to diversify my audience beyond Facebook walls; a friend went through a horrid time, as chronicled in Mateso - The Prelude : R.E.S. Pia C. Maboy Tumekosa and Mateso: Aluta Continua. As an established Facebook note-writer, she turned to me for help. Yet even with my efforts to get her story out there and get the perpetrators of a heinous act of rape to justice, I found that I could not be of adequate help to her needs.

Diary of a Serial Schizo came to be for that reason. I now have a mouthpiece. To channel my crazy out for all to see, and every once in a while, channel what needs to be said, but doesn't seem to be for some reason or the other.

I am the sober drunk, the clean junkie, the philanthropic robber, the romantic arsehole and the industrious vigilante all rolled up in one. A serial schizo.

Yule Mbois Mndialala ( Diary of a Serial Schizo

@french_freddy

Mind over Mutant: The spelling bee who couldn’t e-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-e

2011-05-31T04:26:00.000-07:00

First Published on Randomity Personified by @notmutant

An initiative of the Kenyan Reading Revolution

My family didn’t have a TV till I lobbied for one successfully at the age of 6. @andywarhola could write tales about that, too. The distinct and utter lack of a TV. Or, going to the neighbour’s house to watch one. On the sly. That house, for me, was my friend Subira’s (her name means patience, goes to show) and that of a boy called Dan (who had three brothers-the beginning of my love affair with friendships with male people). That makes two houses… Yay me.

I taught myself to read at the age of 2. I read the same book - 'Kaka Sungura na Ndugu Mbweha' - over and over again till I could read effortlessly. If you are a Kenyan and you read that book; high five. My parents were the epitome of student poverty. Maybe I exaggerate but as I have grown older I have realised our charmed counter-cultural life (no help, no TV) was a response to the general absence of money. That and the accompanying surfeit of love. The egalitarian environment-father bathes child as mother labours over stove before father reads child book and mother tucks in child as father washes dinner dishes-was indicative of the fact that their reality did not allow my parents the privilege of traditional gender roles.

Did I just say ‘traditional gender roles’?

*Fights with the being that has usurped her body & wrests control of her blog from it.*

Phew! That was close! This post was inspired by @French_Freddy who urged me write a little something (is this little enough, Fred? May I stop now?) about why I read as my contribution to Kenya’s Reading Revolution (@readkenya on Twitter). Plus the encouragement of Juliet Maruru (@sheblossoms on Twitter) Aleya Jamel (@aleyajamel on Twitter) and tweeps such as @twezlie and @EdwinAbuga

“Quit stalling, lady!” a voice shouts from the gallery. All right my good people, these are my confessions:

I read because it’s an escape. At just about the point when the world has thrown all manner of things my way, it throws a book that rights my upside-down existence and evens the valleys. Then I walk through; barely looking up but safe in the knowledge that I shall survive and live to read another day. It’s an escape from the misery, the uncertainties of life. @veelangat and @kemikali can testify to that far-away, did-you-say-something, effect books have on me. And they know me well enough to be agents of the universe when I need a book thrown my way. The book cover as trapdoor. Escape.

I read because it’s what we do in my family. Reading as tradition. My brother T, now 11, used to read the paper upside down as a toddler. Read, in a manner of speaking. More like observe the text with a keen, intent look. Trying to piece together what it was that kept his pre-teen sister and parents so absorbed. And when he started to read, his enthusiasm couldn’t be curbed. Now that I’ve written that, I’ve remembered how I used to ask the butcher to wrap the meat in particular pages of the newspaper so that I could read the article on the paper when I got home. My mother knew I did this-I requested those very sheets of paper even when she was the one buying meat with me by her side-and she approved of it. That’s just, as the young would say, how we roll.

I read to be informed. The written word as teacher. My parents are of that in-between generation that had never talked about sex(uality) with their parents but was faced with the scourge that is AIDS at the time when their children were growing up. To talk or not to talk? Or in my parents case, to foist books on said child or not? Foist not, converse not; my parents decided. And being lovers of the spoken word, they would not choose to deny themselves the chance to have The Conversation. Many times. I read a plethora of Sex-Ed books. Christian ones, secular ones, NGO-funded ones….with some Kama Sutra thrown in at 11 or 12; for good measure. I couldn’t be bothered in those days; I actually thought they were being nags. These days, when I am with my age-mates and I am treated like an oversexed female person for all the knowledge I have, I see what motivated my parents. Knowledge is power. I am powerful. It’s not just about the birds and the bees that I read to be informed. The world, money, power, war and peace. Love, pain, pleasure; one knows so much more when one reads.

An oversexed female person, for all the knowledge I have

This will sound ridiculous but I read to learn to write. By which I mean spell. Kemikali (the man usually referred to as X) has made a comedy out of my inability to pronounce words. My constant rebuttal? I can spell them. I know, it’s lame, I should go for Toastmasters or something similar. But why, when I can spell, spell, spell? My brother, rearing himself on a steady diet of TV (how time flies! How things change!) can spell a word by the hearing; I can explain a word by the reading. I’m the spelling bee who can’t pronounce words, he is the champion born too many miles from the Big Apple. And so I continue to read. I may never get to say myriad words as they should be said (on what side of the Atlantic, ask I?) but at least I can write them. From the gallery, “Write on, sister! Write on!”. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

I read to experience the full gamut of human expression and feeling. The happy, the sad, the flights of fancy, the ideas that transform, heal, change. The Bible, the Qur’an, the inspired writings of Kahlil Gibran. Frost, Garcia Marquez, Soyinka, Ngugi, Mahfouz, Gordimer, Adichie, Arundhati Roy….Emily Dickinson (or My high school crush). Those ‘trashy’ romance novels (my dad encouraged me to read those as a teenager; so I could wrap up the fantasy bit of my life that much sooner, I guess), those bits of classic literature (I used to drive my mum to church and sit at the park outside reading ‘War and Peace’, heathen that I was; ha ha), contemporary literature. I may never be left on bridge by a lover, or have a lesbian one; but I can read the experiences of one who has. I have never been to Kathmandu and shall never go to apartheid South Africa though I have a sense of what it’s like to be in those places.

A story: Once I was at a supermarket and an autistic child (thank you, Reader’s Digest) walked up to me and held my hand as he looked into my eyes with a piercing look. I was, quite honestly, enchanted (I was 19 and sans lover; not a lot of people were lining up to look at me like that) and held his hand as I greeted him and asked him his name (he told me) before his mum came and took him away. Greetings, transfer of child, best wishes. Then we met again at a the pharmacy in the very mall. A repeat of what had happened earlier and a fresh round ofgoodbyes.

I may never have a child, let alone an autistic one, but I felt like I had met that child before. In a book. Not this specific one but the different, the unusual, the outcast, the misunderstood. I had met him in his world and in those of others and I felt like I was meeting an old friend when I met that lad. My empathy was informed by my knowledge of that child from the wealth of books read. The world is full of experiences, situations, feelings, that we may never chance upon. Yet, in a book, we get to experience all these. And so much more.

I read because it’s a cheap means to wealth. No, I’m not talking about all those motivational books. I am talking about a wealth of knowledge, of expressions, of feeling, of twists and turns; and of money, too. The book that costs one less than 50 US cents that transports you to a whole new world (cue Aladdin on the magic carpet), the fantasy worlds explored. I realised, as an adult, that bar ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White’, I read all the other fairy tales in their unabridged form. That is to say, as The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen first presented them (thank you, Penguin Popular Classics). The student poverty mentioned earlier was the chief cause but looking back, I can honestly say I grew up rich. I got a slice of history and it was a gift that kept giving. I went to 19th century England, and walked with Mowgli through the jungle. I learnt why things fell apart and pieced together the reason behind all the strange animals in those Australian cartoons (Australia was a bit of an obsession at age 5) as I ran away from the Amazonian creatures on my way to the ruins of ancient civilisations. All this while I admired the Sphinx and cried over the beloved country. All this knowledge, all this history for the girl who was rich because she read. So much for my ‘few words about why I read’, huh? But these and so many more are the reasons why I read. I could go on and on but as I conclude I would like to say that nothing opens the mind more than books read, nothing whets the appetite for knowledge better than the written word, nothing quenches the thirst for answers more than that which comes to you through reading.

I am a Kenyan who reads and I support the Reading Revolution. Why do you read?

Tagged: All the tweeps mentioned herein who love to read and haven’t written about why they read

Cocks, Eggs, Hunting and Bendovers: From Reading to Writing

2011-05-27T01:50:00.000-07:00

Following my relentless drone on why I read recently, an apple dampling of a friend responded as follows:

For me ... reading is not a culture nor a value ... it's innate. And if a book or article is good ... it can change my day. Say Paulo Coelho, that man is one of my finest authors yet.
I loooove your article. You're a writer no doubt ... but do me a favour ... write one article that is simple.. both in language and expression ... the kind of article that I can give a teenager to read...

This triggered some thought train in me, and I went back to the first time I EVER saw a computer. Think back to that time. How you thought it was an alien contraption designed by the Western Civilization to prove just that. That they were civilized, and by extension, you were not. Well, that’s how I would see it now.

Around the time I first saw a computer, my family owned several thoroughbred cockerel steeds – and an equal number of hens to boot J. End result? Farm-fresh egg gathering duty for you-know-who, being as I was the first born. It may sound easy, but trust me, when your only contact with animals at a young age of 12 involved the manic school teachers who thoroughly bred your buttocks’ skin into thick hide, facing psycho chicks with their sharp beaks was an altogether not too funny affair.

So picture me with a big plastic bowl in my hands, fishing for eggs in a brood that

1) stunk as hell

2) had enough activity to rival Westlands on Bendover Thursday; and most frightening of all

3) had tiny little she-devils equipped with the machinery to pluck out an eyeball – like ice cream melting off a cone – should the need arise.

Crazy Chicken

Seeing as I was basically going to steal their kiddoz, the occasion more often than not did arise. Now to add to that, I could not risk breaking an egg, for at the back of my mind ran the soundtrack from my last session with my mom’s well-engineered fingernails. An egg cost 7 bob at the time, and trust me, that’s a lot of money when you’re rearing chicken for eggs. Egg-hunting. Yes, hunting; forget that they were domestic fowl coz there was nothing domestic about their violence; nor that they were in my own back yard.

It was to be an experience I came to learn a critical aspect in putting my options on a scale. You see those little oblongs brought with them awe – the whole hen or chicken first argument – fear and care in equal measure, a critical mix that was similarly experienced when I first saw a computer back in 1999, on exhibit at the National Show. Forget 2000 when I actually got to lay my hands on one, coz that was tantamount to an emotion I cannot share today, having decided to keep this post strictly PG Toddler.

When that eventuality came, as with egg-rearing, I was given a set of step-to-step instructions not limited to

a)     DO NOT eat in the Comp lab (It was sacred like that, drink spills and all being the antichrist to the holy gadget)
b)     DO NOT move or disconnect anything (You are not holy enough to touch anything but the mouse and keyboard, so deal with it)
c)      DO NOT…and so on

I could tell you what you should and should not do when dealing with chicken, but seeing as I’ve digressed enough as it is, and you’re probably wondering ‘Where the hell does this bring us to reading or writing?’, I’ll get right down to it. Right after I add that you’re beyond help if you still have a phobia for chicks.

Bendover Thursday

You see, when you read, it’s a bit like you’re throwing yourself into the world of a kid marveling at a computer’s beautiful curves and overall physique, or another faced with the idea of picking a neurotic crow’s young ones. It can be terrifying at first. You might need a dictionary sometimes, other times even that alone won’t help you get what ther writer [is trying to] communicate. But should you chose to – and am guessing you probably have by this point – it’s an experience that will exhilarate you, and soon enough train you to merge your awe with your fear, and eventually your care.

By the time you’ve read enough to earn the title ‘avid’, you begin to feel an urge to communicate your own thoughts. To find and bring out your own voice. To be the one communicating what you feel could have been said easier, funnier, louder or better by an author, but to you was not. And that, good people, is where the reader becomes the writer. That is where the awe and fear, turn into care. Care to write that which communicates to you. Care to make sure – as with many newbie writers – that your diary is not read. Care to make sure that if it is, it only makes sense to you.

And finally, care to bring out the sense, tense, grammar, drama, flow, glow, punctuation, pace fluctuation, creativity, brevity and general oomph that leads you to your next big step.

Publishing your voice. For there is no science to writing, only a science to being read.

My Next Reading Revolution post: Why I Write

iridiumInteractive Kenya – Cradle to the Brave

2011-05-24T09:24:00.001-07:00

I started out with iridiumInteractive Kenya two months ago, as Social Media Associate, two weeks before I cleared Varsity, where I majored in Publishing and Media Studies. Having heard of iridium in mid-February through a Graduate Recruitment with Juliet, the Business Manager, and Sri, I immediately began working on a few projects here and there, specifically linking the Economic Stimulus Programme with iridiumInteractive Limited, courtesy of whom the program now has a website and the social media handles we are currently involved in raising awareness for.

It’s been quite a journey, one that’s opened up my mind to the endless opportunities I only thought existed in the minds of authors I read; in fact just before the Graduate Recruitment I’d acquired a copy of Tom L. Friedman’s ‘The World is Flat‘, and as soon as I heard what Sri had to say, I could not help but muse at the coincidences that had led me to iridium. I even imagined Sri saying,

“I picked the name [iridiumInteractive] because I wanted it to have a positive connotation of being assertive,”

reminiscence echoing words I had read only a week prior to this gathering at Kenya’s Bomb Blast Memorial Center.

The Graduate Recruitment Seminar, held on 21st February 2011

So now I find myself in an office, barely days after I did my last paper and effectively cleared my 8-4-4 (the Kenyan educational system, ironically tagged the moniker ‘8 – 4 – 4 = 0′ to signify the retardation of the system). Having been an AIESEC leader myself, the position feels a bit like running a Local Chapter, and in fact a lot of the guys interning for iridium under me are former or current AIESECers.
I find myself in the enviable position of being boss to my former boss, in terms of the AIESEC hierarchy in Kenya, but that’s a story for another day.

The Economic Stimulus program keeps us busy as we work as Social Media Marketers helping improve the Kenyan Government’s reach and accountability through iridium’s innovative ESP tool. The ability to track resource allocation in the various Kenyan constituencies via the Geographic Information System on the ESP gives citizens a lot of power and we’re proud to say that since we started our campaign on Social Media the awareness of this key Government accountability tool has increased momentously. Meanwhile, the rest of the team, including Annie and Rachel, have been working the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) project, intending to raise 1,000,000 sites for SMEs by 2014.

Too much analysis = paralysis

By the feel of things, and judging by my own assessment of the market during Sales runs, I am positively confident that this is not only achievable, but surpassable! I certainly can’t wait to do the SME clip productions next month with the team from Hyderabad. It’s a good beginning, a good course, a good track we run…carpe diem to you all!

Why I Read

2011-05-23T05:56:00.000-07:00

@French_Freddy's Reading Evolution

When I was 7, my parents moved to Central (and - to my young mind - very poor) Kenya, from West (and - clearly - very posh) Lands, following a significant change in social status. At that young age, I gradually grew tired of the nagging. "Why won't you take me to the mall? Why can't I go see my friends? and Why don't you buy me [this] or [that]?" were replaced with an urge to find a good story to escape to.

I read because I needed to feel, needed to live and feel alive. Because I needed to think, understand and communicate with grandeur. With that which I could have. That which I could be. Eventually, I'd find a writer who threw me the kind of grip I was prepared to catch. From John Kriamiti to Ben Carson; The River Between to Beyond the River(s) Kwai and Yei; The Da Vinci Code to The Broken Drum; Mills & Boons to Sweet Valley Twins (yes, them too, and I would TOTALLY deny it later ) ... quite simply, I. read. everything.

Today I read because it is written. Because I have learnt to love chasing after a good story. Because there are ideas trapped in writing somewhere out there; ideas altogether too good not to be read. I read to wonder why they were written. Away from the inculcations that are many a reviewer waxing philosophic about nothing. I read because like Silverstein, I hope to be that rare adult who can still think like a child. Still think anew, with no burden of opinion and wont.

I read because ignorance is grossly overrated. Because I live in an age that allows me to read anything. To read because I write, and in truth, so do you. It could be that exam for a course you wrote notes on; that mwakenya you wrote to cheat in an exam; that search term you keyed in on Google to find some info.

I read because everything I love is written. Be it love itself, or history; be it language itself, or mystery. Be it art, music, photography, war, or even life itself. Because actors are sometimes so painfully unflattering that only my mind can construct corrections for them.

They say a picture's worth a thousand words. Give me a thousand words any day. da Vinci's word's on what he felt painting the Mona Lisa, or Monet's with the Bassin aux Nymphéas.

Ok, maybe the Monet was a close call...

Because the written word is more mature, better meditated; because I can think, and think therefore I exist. I read to play with Zinedine Zidane; I read to rule alongside Cleopatra; I read to fight with Achilles and Alexander, think with Socrates and Bonaparte. I read to look up the Eiffel Tower, paint with Monet, compose with Mozart and write with Hugo; to revel with Keith Richards, rebel with the Maji Maji, smoke something with Bob Marley, and something else with Christopher Hitchens.

I read, quite simply, because my sanity depends upon it. Because all things said and done, stick me in a room full of books and nothing else (ok, maybe a lifetime of free internet and some bitings), and I die a happy old man. A man in love with word. A man satisfied with his wordy relationship. A well-worded man.

RULEBOOK OF A PLAYER

2011-05-23T02:27:00.000-07:00

by Theo McCheatskin

I am a man of easy ‘virtue’. I am the kind of man that wants to literally bed any girl he sees walking in the street. I am that man who gives Men a bad name. Though calling me a slut in this overly sensitive world would be derogatory. How about we settle for part-time-lover… That’s just about subtle enough.

Hi. I am Thedd. And I am a man-whore. Sorry, I meant to say ‘part-time lover.’

Urban Dictionary defines me as "a male that has several key attributes. A typically young (18-25) male who dresses in designer clothing, carries multiple cellphones, has become a master of manipulating women, and makes it his personal mission to sleep with as many different women as possible qualifies as a manwhore. He also has virtually no emotional attachment to any of his victims. The reputation of manwhore makes gaining new potential victims somewhat difficult, so most manwhores are forced to switch territories and stomping grounds frequently. However, even in familiar environments, many manwhores can continue to get laid by playing the "I'm misunderstood, or "I'm just pissed and acting out over a bad breakup" card. A true master in both deception and cunning, a manwhore is any "good girl's" worst nightmare come true."

The reason we are here today is to sow our wild oats. If you are thinking commitment, think of her ten years from now: Yes, even Wambui Otieno would look better. When the make-up can’t even salvage the accident of a face she has. And you ask yourself: How did it come to this?

Reminder:

You were tipsy, she was horny.

You sealed the deal, like you were supposed to.

Then you made a mistake, called the next day. That, you were not supposed to do.

Years later you are walking down the aisle. You are trying to convince yourself that maybe, you will get used to how she looks like in the morning. After all, that is all marriage is about - Tolerance. I care a great deal, and that’s why I wouldn’t want you to end up caged for life in a sex-free union. Marriage leads to the death of your libido and the birth of immeasurable responsibilities. Whoever said settling down was a signature of maturity must have been one unintelligent bastard that couldn’t charisma his way up a girl’s skirt…

So just in case you wanna avoid that inevitable retrogression into the futility of your fruit, I suggest you open up your little black book and take note:

1. Never take her to your crib.

Should the worst come to the worst, she will not know anywhere else to go but back to her place. And by worst case scenarios I’m talking pregnancy and an STI that you may have contracted from Ciku (many whores I know usually go by that name, so no disrespect meant to all namesakes) and spread it to X in the heat of the moment when the rubber bursts.

2. Never introduce X to your friends.

This makes the dumping and playing easy. When you have mutual friends and you are spotted with another girl, word will get back to her. And try make up as many excuses when she’s eager to introduce you to her friends. Girls are controlled by their moods, so get her out of that mood. I don’t know, make her cranky...do something. But whatever you do, please don’t do her friends (And I don't mean this in a sexual context)!!

3. Act dumb.

This always works. When she says something intimate like

WHERE ARE WE HEADED?

Say:

WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

You know what she means alright but make her repeat herself and she will get bored at some point and switch the topic. If she keeps repeating, then ask her back:

WHERE ARE WE, TO BEGIN WITH?

Say you wouldn’t want to jump into conclusions.... Stupid will always sail you through to the next day.

4. Never perjure yourself.

Wait for the verdict. Like if you were with another girl then next day X asks suspiciously: What were you doing last night?? Don’t rush to answer, ask her the same question back and see how it goes. But never admit to anything or act like you are guilty; women are like private investigators, they usually pick up on the slightest of clues. So until she pronounces her decree, please, act cool.

5. Never explain yourself.

Be brief. When narrating a happening, try and limit yourself to minute details. Women are beautiful liars: they can really be economical with the truth in a million ways: faking an orgasm during sex; telling you she’s only slept with six men in her life (when in actual sense she’s swiped so many ‘cards’ that even an Equity Bank ATM machine has nothing on her); the yellow kid who’s a midget is yours (when you are darker than night and taller than a Sud)...

Men on the other hand forget the lie as soon as it leaves the mouth; tripping over your fibs is only too easy. Therefore it is important that you give minimal ~~tit~~ tidbits that you can easily track back to.

6. Don’t do sleepovers.

Girls get quite comfortable once you let her spend at your place. Once you’ve let her sleep in on the first night, she won’t be sure how to act. Second time: maybe it was a rebound. Third time: oh boy, you just gave her the keys to your place. I forgot my bra; I forgot my panties; oh, my toothbrush etc…

Fact: Women never forget. In reality, the same manner a dog pisses around to mark its territory; X is strategically laying down her tracks and sinking her claws deeper into you.

7. Wear rubbers all the time.

X says she’s allergic to rubber, I say I’m allergic to babies. No matter how much she claims to be faithful or into you thou shall not proceed into her in-zone with night goggles off. It’s a jungle in there, with militant commandos such as Syphilis and Gonorrhea looming in the shadows camouflaged and all. And there are some psycho chics (Yes, I presume you thought the era of the baby-trap was long gone) Reality check: It’s not, some crazy mannerless senseless hopeless women still pop out these creatures to lay claim to your future earnings (Women have a knack for telling who’ll make it to a somebody in the future, like they are fortune-tellers of some sorts)

8. Jealousy is a vice.

Pay no mind to whatever she does in a bid to make you lay claim to her. I don’t know what it is with women and wanting to be treated like @$$-ets. She’s getting cozy with some guy at the bar, or on the dance floor and keeps glancing in your direction, hoping, waiting. DO NOT make a move or cast a glance in her direction. If nothing happens...she’ll subconsciously write you off in her mind as a lost cause, or a bad debt in case you tapped that. Women don’t like undecided ~~50/50~~ men. They like their men decisive on what they want; by not being decisive about wanting her to just yourself, she’ll figure that you just aren’t that into her and her “settling” antennae will be switched off to your waves.

9. Shallow.

Never engage in intellectual conversation or show any signs of being a big thinker. Be the average blonde bloke who talks about the most inconsequential of things e.g. the clubs, matatus...anything nonsensical. (Note: This is after you’ve had her and not before. On the first instance acting this way could repulse her.) The only depth you are allowed to delve into deeply, is hers.

10. Bang her as soon as you can.

Dragging a one-nighter could be detrimental and catchy-feely, on her part that is. The first night is the only ideal. If it doesn’t work out on the first, try lock it down on date number two. If this goes beyond a week, count your losses and move on to the next one.

+254: Breaking The Code.

Open letter 1: To Kenyan

2011-05-23T01:19:00.000-07:00

Esteemed Kenyan. Allow me to tell you that you are impossible. Yes. All 43 or so of you. All 210 of you. And more so, all 93 of you. No matter where you look, there's an example of a Kenyan playing damn. All I need do is buy some popcorn, put the bucket in my lap, sit back and relax...and just like that, with no need for invitation, mission or permission, you'll pop out a ~~bright~~ idea and allow me to watch you go down in flames with it. Figuratively speaking. Or not.

Many of us would rather sell ourselves to other countries than deal with our own

If you ask the politician, he'll have a view on how everyone but himself is the problem. Seat the regular citizen down and he'll write you an entire script on how the politicos are the problem, and how what lies between him and the regular citizen is even crazier. It could be the jav driver who hikes the fares as soon as a drop of rain hits him, or when Osama kicks the seabed; it could be the Mobile Service Provider who 'clogs up the airwaves' every time they wanna halla at their Sugar Mamma, Mpango wa Kando or Chips Funga; it could even be the Institution of Higher Learning whose capacity to institute any learning -- let alone the higher kind -- you deem incredibly suspect.

Today, however, I take a split second off what was my paying job to moot you a question. Can we really all be the problem? To answer that, let me be Kenyan.

Hello; my name is Kenyan, and I am a loose canon. A troubled soul on a quest. Yet I am trapped; trapped because I have refused to free myself from four little walls, a ceiling and a floor with no door. I have refused to think beyond these walls, out of this fucking box. I am Adrian Monk meets Gregory House MD, completing my capacity to feel with a refusal to feel it. I am anathema to me either way. You would loose your canon too, because you are me. You are Kenyan.

If This Country Burns, We Burn With IT!

You hate politicians. You love your country. Perhaps you could hate the system, yet still love the country that runs it. I'm curious as to which is stronger. Can your hatred for the status quo spur you to be the water that calms the fiery storm we find ourselves in every so often? Or are you so 'determined' that you prefer to take matters into your hands and be the kindling that stokes it further?

You could be the teenager who claims that it's never that serious. A claim that comes off the deadening of your affect to all things yours; all things Kenyan. For how else can you be made to see that it actually is serious without your father or mother - figuratively or otherwise - being more than just a spectator in this arcade game we call a Kenyan existence? After all, Super Mario was never that serious either; we seem to think that we can simply press restart once we mess up and the screen screams Game Over.

Everyone has an opinion, and it is no coincidence that you, Kenyan, are thought a reckless teenager today. See Swaggalicious or Google "Teenage Road Carnage in Kenya" for further details. That you are thought a stupid politician. Think Sonko, Bad Boy of the 10th Parliament; UK with his Tuko Pamoja BS; Mututho with the crazy corruption-enabling law. That you are a greedy lot ready to sit around and do nothing while Kenya cries - insert many Civil Servants, Corporate, Media, NGOs in Kibera, Kanjow...name it.

The question should not be 'Who is to blame?', much as it should be how we can change.

(To be continued)